13. Serial Killers and Scholars of Religion
Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith
Martha Smith Roberts [+ ]
Fullerton College
Martha Smith Roberts is Assistant Professor of Religion at Fullerton College. Martha's teaching covers all aspects of religion in culture and the diversity of religious traditions around the world. Her research and writing focus on North American religious diversity and pluralism, race and ethnicity, new religious movements, and religious studies pedagogy. She has written articles on hula hooping, communities of practice, antiracist pedagogy, and religious diversity and pluralism in the United States.
Description
This chapter responds to Craig Martin’s discussion of the realist/anti-realist debate and its importance to the academic study of religion. Building on Martin’s call to take anti-realism seriously, this response begins to imagine how an anti-realist theoretical framework could become a part of the field's self-definition. Could anti-realism provide a foundation for the academic study of religion to construct itself as a field that acknowledges the strength of second-order critical thought as its central form and content? As a framework that renders visible the creation of both religion and scholars of religion, the author suggests that anti-realism can be generative of the field’s value.