Theory and Method Reading List (Final)

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Theory and Method Examination Reading List: Talal Asad. 1993. “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category.” In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam , pp. 27-54. The Johns Hopkins UP. Roland Barthes. 1972 (1957). “Myth Today.” In Mythologies , trans. by Annette Lavers, pp. 109-59. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Georges Batailles. 1989 (1973). Theory of Religion . Trans. by Robert Hurley. Zone Books. Catherine Bell. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions . Oxford UP. Pierre Bourdieu. 1991 (1971). “Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field.” Trans. by Jenny B. Burnside, Craig Calhoun, and Leah Florence. Comparative Social Research 13: 1–44. ---. 1991 (1984). “Social Space and the Genesis of ‘Classes’.” In Language and Symbolic Power , trans. by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, pp. 229-51. Harvard UP. ---. 1998 (1994). “The Economy of Symbolic Goods.” In Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action , trans. by Randall Johnson, pp. 92-123. Stanford UP. Pascal Boyer. 2002. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought . Basic Books. Wendy Doniger. 1998. The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth . New York: Columbia UP. Mary Douglas. 2002 (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo . Routledge Classics. Émile Durkheim. 1995 (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life . Trans. by Karen E. Fields. The Free Press. Mircea Eliade. 1987 (1957). The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion . Trans. by Willard R. Trask. Harcourt. ---. 1961. “History of Religions and a New Humanism.” History of Religions 1.1: 1-8. Sigmund Freud. 1989 (1927). The Future of an Illusion . W. W. Norton & Company . --- . 1990 (1913). Totem and Taboo . W. W. Norton & Company . Clifford Geertz. 1973. “Religion as a Cultural System.” In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays , pp. 87-125. Basic Books. William Graham. 1989. “Scripture as Spoken Word.” In Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective , ed. by Miriam Levering, pp. 129-69. State U of New York P. Hans Kippenberg. 2002. Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age . Trans. by Barbara Harshav. Princeton UP. Claude Lévi-Strauss. 1963 (1955). “Magic and Religion,” Part 3 of Structural Anthropology , trans. by Clair Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Shoepf, pp. 165-241. Basic Books. Bruce Lincoln. 1989. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification . Oxford UP. ---. 1996. “Theses on Method.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 8.3: 225-7. Russell T. McCutcheon. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia . Oxford UP. Martin Riesebrodt. 2010. The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion . U of Chicago P. Edward Said. 1978. Orientalism . Vintage Books. Eric J. Sharpe. 1986. Comparative Religion: a History . Open Court. Jonathan Z. Smith. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion . U of Chicago P. Stanley J. Tambiah. 1990. Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality . Cambridge UP. Victor Turner. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure . De Gruyter. Max Weber. 1993 (1922). The Sociology of Religion . Trans. by Ephraim Fischoff. Beacon Books..

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Introduction Society Bruce Lincoln NY: Oxford University Press, 1989
Discourse and the Construction of Introduction Society Bruce Lincoln NY: Oxford University Press, 1989 The studies that follow pursue the question of how certain specific modes of discourse-myth, ritual, and classification-Gin be, and have been, em ployed as effective instruments not only for the replication of established social forms (this much is well known), but more broadly for the construc tion, deconstruction, and reconstruction of society itself. Before we can turn to this topic, however, there is another that must be treated: No consideration of discourse is complete that does not also take account of force. Together, discourse and force are the chief means whereby social borders, hierarchies, institutional formations, and habituated patterns of behavior are both main tained and modified. Force and Discourse Force (i.e., the exercise or threat of physical violence) is an instrument open to a variety of uses by individuals and groups within any society. It is regu larly employed by those who hold official power to compel obedience and suppress deviance. Thus they preserve generalized social stability and, what is more, a specific configuration in which they-and certain others with whom they have close and complex relations~occupy positions of privilege and enjoy disproportionately large 'shares of those classic scarce and desired resources Weber identified as wealth, power, and prestige as well as such other desiderata as education, information, health, leisure, and sumptuary goods of various sorts. Further, force may also be used by ruling elites to effect significant social change, for instance, when they direct the violence at their disposal beyond the borders of their own society in campaigns of ex pansive conquest through which ever-larger social aggregates with more .
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1 THEORY and METHOD in the STUDY of RELIGION This Course
Prof. Wasserman Fall 2016 Office: Loree 106 Weds 4/5: 2:50–5:50 Office hours: Weds 12:30–1:30 and by appointment Bishop House 211 E-mail: [email protected] Phone: (401) 742 2540 THEORY AND METHOD IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION This course treats theories of religion, with particular attention to issues of theory and method that are of relevance for research at the master’s level. We will treat a number of classical theorists such as Mircea Eliade, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Clifford Geertz and also focus attention on important sub-topics such as myth and mythmaking; women and gender; ritual practices; religion and violence; colonialism; and the contributions of cognitive science. The readings are drawn mainly from primary sources and they are organized so as to provoke productive comparisons and counter-point. Books required for purchase:* Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory/Ritual Practice (Oxford, 2009) Nancy Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity (University of Chicago, 1992) Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion after September 11 (University of Chicago, 2003) Course requirements: 1. Attendance, participation (including leading discussion), and reading summaries (roughly 50%). For each class, students will prepare a written reading summaries as follows: a. Summaries will normally run 2–3 pages, single-spaced. b. Summaries must be uploaded to the Sakai site by 12:00 noon each Weds and printed out and brought to class. The student leading discussion will send their summary to the instructor by 11:55pm on Tuesday evening. c. Reading summaries may take a variety of forms but they should include an outline of the main arguments and organizing concepts, as well as notes about passages that you find particularly interesting or opaque.
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Debating Dumezil: Recent Studies in Comparative Mythology
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Review Article; JASO 1993 24:119-31]
Debating Dumézil Recent studies in comparative mythology Nick Allen [Review Article; JASO 1993 24:119-31] WOUTER W. BELIER, Decayed Gods: Origin and Development of Georges Dumézil’s ‘Idéologie Tripartie’ (Studies in Greek and Roman Religion 7), Leiden etc.: Brill 1991. xv, 239 pp., Selected Bibliography, Index. No price given. BRUCE LINCOLN, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (with a foreword by Wendy Doniger), Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1991. xxi, 270 pp., Figures, Indexes. £35.95/£14.25//$51.75/$20.75. GREGORY SCHREMPP (foreword by M. Sahlins). Magic arrows: The Maori, the Greeks and the Folklore of the Universe (foreword by Marshall Sahlins), Madison: University of Minnesota Press. 191 pp., Works cited, Index. No price given. Dumézil (1898-1986) was an intellectual anomaly. He operated in the disciplinary space which lies between Indo-European comparative linguistics, comparative religion, and half a dozen specialized philological disciplines, but would have liked to be recognized first and foremost as a historian. Yet there is a case for saying that in spirit his work is closer to anthropology than to any other discipline. He was par excellence a comparativist, concentrating on the older Indo-European world, but far from ignorant about other cultures (in particular, Chinese, Turkish, Caucasian and Quechua). He used written sources but, like many anthropologists, was interested in them largely for what they could reveal about the unwritten traditions that shaped them. His work does indeed bear on myth, ritual and pantheons, but it goes far beyond ‘religion’, in any narrow sense of the word.
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RUSSELL TRACEY MCCUTCHEON [email protected]
April 2019 RUSSELL TRACEY MCCUTCHEON [email protected] https://religion.ua.edu/profiles/russell‐mccutcheon/ Citizenship: Canadian and U.S. Home: 2416 Glendale Gardens Office: Department of Religious Studies Tuscaloosa, AL 35401 USA University of Alabama (205) 752‐4415 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487‐0264 USA Cell (205) 310‐7546 (205) 348‐8512; 348‐5271 EDUCATION Ph.D. Centre for the Graduate Study of Religion, University of Toronto, 1995 (Religious Studies) Dissertation Supervisor: Prof. Neil McMullin; Committee Members: Profs. Donald Wiebe, Willard Oxtoby; External Examiner: Prof. J. Samuel Preus (Indiana University) M.A. Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, 1988 (Religious Studies) Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Ernest Best Th.M. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 1987 (Master of Theology) Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Pamela Dickey Young M.Div. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada 1986 (Master of Divinity) B.A. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada 1983 (Life Sciences) ACADEMIC WORK EXPERIENCE - University Research Professor, University of Alabama, Spring 2018-present (voted by UA Board of Trustees February 2, 2018) - Professor (tenured), College of Arts & Sciences, University of Alabama, 2005-present - Appointed, Graduate College, University of Alabama, 2004-present - Associate Professor (tenured), Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama, 2001- 2005 - Associate Professor (untenured), Department of Religious Studies, Southwest Missouri State University, 1999-2001 - Appointed, School
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The Indo-European Cattle-Raiding Myth Author(S): Bruce Lincoln Reviewed Work(S): Source: History of Religions, Vol
The Indo-European Cattle-Raiding Myth Author(s): Bruce Lincoln Reviewed work(s): Source: History of Religions, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Aug., 1976), pp. 42-65 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062296 . Accessed: 28/04/2012 16:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to History of Religions. http://www.jstor.org Bruce Lincoln THE INDO-EUROPEAN CATTLE-RAIDING MYTH In an earlier paper entitled "The Indo-European Myth of Crea- tion,"' I attempted to trace out a myth of Indo-European provenance that detailed the events which were believed to have been crucial in the establishment of the world as the Proto-Indo- Europeans knew it. There I argued that this myth told of two brothers, *Manu- "Man" (Sanskrit Manu, Avestan *Manus, Germanic Mannus being linguistic correspondences; Old Norse Odinn and Latin Romulus being structurally related) and *Yemo- "Twin" (Sanskrit Yama, Avestan Yima, Old Norse Ymir, and Latin Remus being linguistic matches; Germanic Tuisco being a semantic match; Sanskrit Mandvi and Purusa, Pahlavi Gayomart being structurally related).
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