Kathryn Lofton, “Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon” (2011)
Kathryn Lofton, Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (2011) by A.T. Coates Katie Lofton’s Oprah: Gospel of an Icon is one of the most exciting recent works in American religious history. As I said of the...
View ArticleBruno Latour, “Fetish-Factish” and “What is Iconoclash?”
Latour seems to be having a moment in religious studies right now. It is easy to see why: for Latour, religion constitutes a central element of modernity. Fetish… factish. Scientific “facts” behave...
View ArticleMarx, “Theses on Feuerbach” (1845)
Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach” (1845). Online version. Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach offers eleven short critiques of Feuerbach’s dialectical materialism. In the dialectical philosophies of Feuerbach...
View ArticleGeertz, Asad, and American Religious History
Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System” and “Thick Description.” Talal Asad, “Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz” aka. “The Construction of Religion as an...
View ArticleMarcel Mauss, The Gift
Marcel Mauss, The Gift. (1925) Do ut des. I have to admit, Mauss’s classic study of the gift managed to surprise me, even on a re-read. Mauss upends assumptions about the gift as a category of...
View ArticleMircea Eliade, “The Sacred and the Profane”
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. (orig. 1957, my edition 1987) David Morgan and I recently had occasion to talk about Eliade. It was not so long ago, he recalled, that...
View ArticleF. Max Müller, Linguistic studies of religion
F. Max Müller, Natural Religion (1888-1892) – http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=127 F. Max Müller, Preface to Sacred Books of the East (1879) –...
View ArticleWilliam James, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (1902)
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) Here’s a free pdf: http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/wjames/varieties-rel-exp.pdf You may want to save reading this until you need a nap…...
View ArticleE.B. Tylor, “Primitive Culture,” (1871)
E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture 2 vols. (1871) Vol. 1 – http://books.google.com/books/about/Primitive_Culture.html?id=AucLAAAAIAAJ Vol. 2 –...
View ArticleJames Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” (1890)
James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, (1890) http://www.templeofearth.com/books/goldenbough.pdf Frazer’s weighty tome(s) opens by invoking JMW Turner’s painting “The Golden Bough” (above). Its idyllic...
View Article
