Key Categories in the Study of Religion - Contexts and Critiques - Rebekka King
7. Of Dualisms and Doppelgängers: Mapping Ancient Minds and Bodies in Religious Studies
Key Categories in the Study of Religion - Contexts and Critiques - Rebekka King
Robyn Faith Walsh [+]
University of Miami
Robyn Faith Walsh is Associate Professor of the New Testament and Early Christianity at
the University of Miami, Coral Gables. An editor at the Database of Religious History, her
articles have appeared in Classical Quarterly and Jewish Studies Quarterly, among other publications. Her first monograph, The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture was recently published with Cambridge University Press.
Description
Reflecting on the work of Richard Newton, this chapter critiques certain racist and nationalist viewpoints inherited from Romanticism that persist in the study of Religion— among these are speculative theories on so-called Aryan history, the origins of language, and the moral-psychology of the ancients. Essential to this discussion is a reflection on, as Newton describes, “how we narrate… intellectual heritage” and expertise, from the scholars and research we cite to the adaptation of speculative theories that can come to govern our everyday lives and assumptions.