On the Subject of Religion - Charting the Fault Lines of a Field of Study - James Dennis LoRusso
16. Response: The Benefit of Comparison
On the Subject of Religion - Charting the Fault Lines of a Field of Study - James Dennis LoRusso
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
Whether there is such a thing as an “international religious studies field” or not, in response to Rosalind Hackett my paper discusses aspects of the study of religion in Greece and North America, and the benefits of comparing international settings in gaining insight about one’s own background. Furthermore, I argue, that such a comparative endeavor that stems from being acquainted with other cultures can guard against taken for granted assumptions about that thing we commonly call “religion.”