Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith
12. Scholars and the Framing of Objects
Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith
Vaia Touna [+]
University of Alabama
Vaia Touna is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She is author of Fabrications of the Greek Past: Religion, Tradition, and the Making of Modern Identities (Brill, 2017) and editor of Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity: Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place (Equinox, 2019). Her research focuses on the sociology of religion, acts of identification and social formation, methodological issues concerning the use of the category of “religion” in the study of the ancient Graeco-Roman world, as well as the study of the past in general.
Description
Scholars who study the ancient world often assume that material artifacts from the past have a meaning, an identity, and the role of the scholar is to access those meanings as much, or as closely and accurately, as possible. Despite this common assumption and in response—as well as in agreement—to Craig Martin’s chapter, who argues that reality is mind-dependent and that scholars produce what they study, this essay further looks at how artifacts, such as for example terracotta figurines, became meaningful objects from the past and consequently items worth studying through scholarly discourses.