Remembering J. Z. Smith - A Career and its Consequence - Emily D. Crews
20. A Matter of Difference: On the Legacy of J. Z. Smith
Remembering J. Z. Smith - A Career and its Consequence - Emily D. Crews
Matt Sheedy [+]
University of Bonn
Matt Sheedy holds a Ph.D. in the study of religion and is a visiting professor of North American Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. His research interests include critical social theory, theories of secularism and atheism, as well as representations of Christianity, Islam, and Native American traditions in popular and political culture. He is the author of Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility (Routledge, 2021).
Description
In this essay, originally a blog post published on The Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Matt Sheedy argues that Jonathan Z. Smith’s work on comparison, classification, and taxonomy has the potential to teach all his readers that “the study of religion is a boundless field, limited only by our imagination.”