Reading List in Theory and Method for Religious Studies 12.15.09

Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Bell, Catherine, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Berger, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy: Elements of sociological theory of religion, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969). Doniger, Wendy, The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo (London; New York: Routledge, 1994). Durkheim, Émile, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Carol Cosman (Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Eliade, Mircea, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (Cleveland, World Pub. Co., 1966). Freud, Sigmund, The Future of an Illusion, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961). Freud, Sigmund, Totem and Taboo: Some points of agreement between the mental lives of savages and neurotics, trans. James Strachey (London: Routledge, 2001). Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973). Hewitt, Marsha. Critical Theory of Religion: A Feminist Analysis (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1995). James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985). Levy-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques Lincoln, Bruce, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, ideology, and scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Luckman, Thomas. The Invisible Religion (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1967). Malinowski, Bronislaw, Magic, Science, and Religion, and other essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954). Marx, Karl and F. Engels, Marx and Engels on Religion (Moscow, Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1957). Müller, Max, Lectures on the Science of Religion, with a paper on Buddhist Nihilism (New York: Scribner, 1872.) Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy: An inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational, trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford: New York; Oxford University Press, 1969). Pysaiennen, Ilkke. How Religion Works: Toward a New Cognitive Science: Cognition and Culture (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001). Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On Religion (Fortress Press, 1991). Smith, Jonathan Z., Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). Smith, Jonathan Z., Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the history of religions (Leiden: Brill, 1978). Smith, Jonathan Z. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion: A new approach to the religious traditions of mankind (New York: Macmillan, 1963). Tylor, Edward B., Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom (London: Murray, 1871). Turner, Victor Witter, The Ritual Process: Structure and anti-structure (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995). Van der Leeuw, G., Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. J.E. Turner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). Wach, Joachim, The Comparative Study of Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). Weber, Max, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and other writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2002). Weber, Max, Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963).

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General Narrative

Pals, Daniel L., Eight Theories of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Sharpe, Eric. Comparative Religion: A History (Duckworth Publishers, 2009). Strenski, Ivan. Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion (revised ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2006). Taylor, Mark C., ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).