Leslie Dorrough Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3687754 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leslie Dorrough Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leslie Dorrough |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH L D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Avila University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Critics Not Caretakers …The Public Study of Religion 20+ Years In
The topic of our conversation is Russell T. McCutcheon’s Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (SUNY Press 2001). This provocative volume continues to be discussed and argued within the field, warranting an updated volume. With the release of its expanded second edition (Routledge 2024) release, the Bulletin’s editorial team thought readers would appreciate a broader conversation about the book’s impact, legacy, and po…
Teaching the Religions of the World in an Age of Polarization
Teaching a course on religions of the world is challenging, especially considering the cogent critiques of that paradigm and the history of its construction. In our courses and text, we have employed a strategy comparing different representations of a single religion to help students develop analytical and critical thinking skills. Within this approach, we employ a functionalist methodology that addresses how each representation of a religion emp…
Religions of the World
Religions of the World: Questions, Challenges, and New Directions provides a critical introduction to the social, political, and cultural interests that inform how people describe and identify with religion. One of its goals is to provide a sense of methodological transparency that few, if any, other textbooks today offer. The book opens with an Introduction that discusses contemporary methodological concerns in the study of religion, with specia…
Hijacked
Public inquiry into religion is guided by unspoken value judgments which are the products of rarely-discussed political interests. Intentionally or not, much of our public discourse on religion involves a subtle but powerful distinction between “good” and “bad” religion. The implications of these labeling practices are far-reaching, for these judgments manifest in terms such as “fundamentalist,” “radical,” and “extremist,” words that are often th…
Is There a Difference Between “Religion” and “Politics”
Scholars commonly compare and distinguish “religion” and “politics” in their analyses of certain social groups; they often do so in a way that presumes that such terms denote complicated yet still discrete realms that exist in varying degrees of interrelationship. Using the Christian Right as a case study, this essay proposes that we can draw from Bruce Lincoln and Oliver Freiberger’s insights regarding the methodological uses of comparison to re…
Constructing "Data" in Religious Studies
Constructing “Data” in Religious Studies provides a critical introduction to the ways in which the category “data” is understood, produced, and deployed in the discipline of religious studies. The volume is organized into four different sections, entitled “Subjects,” “Objects,” “Scholars,” and “Institutions,” with an epilogue by Russell McCutcheon and Aaron Hughes. The volume’s aim is to reflect, first, on the problems, strategies, and political …
Is Feminism Still Another Dirty “F” Word
The concept of “code-switching” is often used to designate the communicative transgression of some sort of symbolic boundary of identity, often for various social purposes. Progressive activists and scholars alike have used the concept to point out the contradictions and idiosyncracies of groups like Concerned Women for America ( CWA ), a longstanding member of the Christian Right, as it portrays itself as both anti-feminist and pro-feminist simu…
Beyond Religious Right and Secular Left Rhetoric
As Americans are looking ahead to yet another major election cycle, it is virtually certain that religious rhetoric will be deployed as a method of accruing votes. Almost as inevitable is the fact that this rhetoric will cause many of the same Americans to perceive that they live in a culture that is deeply, if not irreparably, religiously divided. This is the phenomenon to which Karin Fry directly speaks in her recent book, Beyond Religious Righ…
Robert Desjarlais “Rethinking Experience,” from Shelter Blues
“Rethinking Experience,” from Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless Robert Desjarlais is a professor of anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College, specializing in how cultures construct both experience and subjectivity, how language operates in complex societies, and social understandings of illness and healing. His ethnographic fieldwork in places as disparate as Nepal and Boston have led to the publication of several studies dealin…
Keeping "critical" critical
In early March 2014, some of the members of Culture on the Edge-a scholarly research collaboration of seven scholars of religion, interested in more theoretically sophisticated studies of identity, and all of whom are at different career stages and at a variety of North American institutions-had a conversation online on the use of the terms "critique" and "critical," terms widely used in the field today but employed in such a variety of ways that…
Keeping "critical" critical
In early March 2014, some of the members of Culture on the Edge-a scholarly research collaboration of seven scholars of religion, interested in more theoretically sophisticated studies of identity, and all of whom are at different career stages and at a variety of North American institutions-had a conversation online on the use of the terms "critique" and "critical," terms widely used in the field today but employed in such a variety of ways that…
Robert Desjarlais “Rethinking Experience,” from Shelter Blues
“Rethinking Experience,” from Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless Robert Desjarlais is a professor of anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College, specializing in how cultures construct both experience and subjectivity, how language operates in complex societies, and social understandings of illness and healing. His ethnographic fieldwork in places as disparate as Nepal and Boston have led to the publication of several studies dealin…
Keeping "critical" critical
In early March 2014, some of the members of Culture on the Edge-a scholarly research collaboration of seven scholars of religion, interested in more theoretically sophisticated studies of identity, and all of whom are at different career stages and at a variety of North American institutions-had a conversation online on the use of the terms "critique" and "critical," terms widely used in the field today but employed in such a variety of ways that…
Beyond Religious Right and Secular Left Rhetoric
As Americans are looking ahead to yet another major election cycle, it is virtually certain that religious rhetoric will be deployed as a method of accruing votes. Almost as inevitable is the fact that this rhetoric will cause many of the same Americans to perceive that they live in a culture that is deeply, if not irreparably, religiously divided. This is the phenomenon to which Karin Fry directly speaks in her recent book, Beyond Religious Righ…
Is Feminism Still Another Dirty “F” Word
The concept of “code-switching” is often used to designate the communicative transgression of some sort of symbolic boundary of identity, often for various social purposes. Progressive activists and scholars alike have used the concept to point out the contradictions and idiosyncracies of groups like Concerned Women for America ( CWA ), a longstanding member of the Christian Right, as it portrays itself as both anti-feminist and pro-feminist simu…
Constructing "Data" in Religious Studies
Constructing “Data” in Religious Studies provides a critical introduction to the ways in which the category “data” is understood, produced, and deployed in the discipline of religious studies. The volume is organized into four different sections, entitled “Subjects,” “Objects,” “Scholars,” and “Institutions,” with an epilogue by Russell McCutcheon and Aaron Hughes. The volume’s aim is to reflect, first, on the problems, strategies, and political …
Hijacked
Public inquiry into religion is guided by unspoken value judgments which are the products of rarely-discussed political interests. Intentionally or not, much of our public discourse on religion involves a subtle but powerful distinction between “good” and “bad” religion. The implications of these labeling practices are far-reaching, for these judgments manifest in terms such as “fundamentalist,” “radical,” and “extremist,” words that are often th…
Is There a Difference Between “Religion” and “Politics”
Scholars commonly compare and distinguish “religion” and “politics” in their analyses of certain social groups; they often do so in a way that presumes that such terms denote complicated yet still discrete realms that exist in varying degrees of interrelationship. Using the Christian Right as a case study, this essay proposes that we can draw from Bruce Lincoln and Oliver Freiberger’s insights regarding the methodological uses of comparison to re…
Critics Not Caretakers …The Public Study of Religion 20+ Years In
The topic of our conversation is Russell T. McCutcheon’s Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (SUNY Press 2001). This provocative volume continues to be discussed and argued within the field, warranting an updated volume. With the release of its expanded second edition (Routledge 2024) release, the Bulletin’s editorial team thought readers would appreciate a broader conversation about the book’s impact, legacy, and po…
Teaching the Religions of the World in an Age of Polarization
Teaching a course on religions of the world is challenging, especially considering the cogent critiques of that paradigm and the history of its construction. In our courses and text, we have employed a strategy comparing different representations of a single religion to help students develop analytical and critical thinking skills. Within this approach, we employ a functionalist methodology that addresses how each representation of a religion emp…
Religions of the World
Religions of the World: Questions, Challenges, and New Directions provides a critical introduction to the social, political, and cultural interests that inform how people describe and identify with religion. One of its goals is to provide a sense of methodological transparency that few, if any, other textbooks today offer. The book opens with an Introduction that discusses contemporary methodological concerns in the study of religion, with specia…
Religion and Society Interactions (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works)