Constructing "Data" in Religious Studies

Leslie Dorrough Smith is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Avila University (Kansas City, MO), where she is also the Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program. She is the author of Righteous Rhetoric: Sex, Speech, and the Politics of Concerned Women for America (Oxford, 2014) and is working on a manuscript on the social significance of political sex scandals in the United States. Her research interests focus on American conservative Protestants, critical theory, and the use of method and theory in both religious studies and gender studies.

• Introduction: , “If I Had A Nickel For Every Time…”: Thinking Critically About “Data”Leslie Dorrough SmithPart I: Subjects1. Partitioning “Religion” and its Prehistories: Reflections on Categories, Narratives, and the Practice of Religious StudiesAnnette Yoshiko Reed, New York UniversityResponses:2. A More Subtle Violence: The Footnoting of “the Aboriginal Principle of Witnessing” by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of CanadaAdam Stewart, Crandall University3. Categorization and Its DiscontentsM Adryael Tong, Fordham University (PhD candidate)4. Categorizing Contrariety: Narrative and Taxonomy in the Construction of Sikhism John Soboslai, Montclair State University5. Interrogating Categories with Ethnography: On the `Five Pillars’ of IslamJennifer A. Selby, Memorial University of NewfoundlandPart II: Objects6. Objects and Objections: Methodological Reflections on the Data for Religious StudiesMatthew C. Baldwin, Mars Hill UniversityResponses:7. The Red Hot Iron: Religion, Nonreligion, and the MaterialPetra Klug, University of Bremen8. Surprised By History: A Response to BaldwinHolly White, Independent Scholar9. Governance and Public Policy as Critical Objects of Investigation in the Study of Religion Peggy Schmeiser, University of Saskatchewan and University of Regina10. Negative Dialektik and the Question Concerning the Relation Between Objects and Concepts: A Response to Matthew BaldwinLucas Wright, University of California, Santa Barbara (PhD candidate)Part III: Scholars11. “[T]he thing itself always steals away”: Scholars and the Constitution of Their Objects of StudyCraig Martin, St Thomas Aquinas CollegeResponses:12. Scholars and the Framing of ObjectsVaia Touna, University of Alabama13. Serial Killers and Scholars of ReligionMartha Smith Roberts, Denison University14. Caffeinated & Half-Baked Realities: Religion as the Opium of the ScholarJason WM Ellsworth, Dalhousie University (PhD candidate)15. On the Seminal Adventure of the Trace: A Response to Craig MartinJoel Harrison, Northwestern University (PhD candidate)Part IV: Institutions16. Labor: Finding the Devil in Indiana Jones: Mythologies of Work and the State of Academic LaborJames Dennis LoRusso, Princeton University17. Teaching: Teaching in the Ideological State of Religious Studies: Notes Towards a Pedagogical FutureRichard Newton, University of Alabama18. Departments: Competencies and Curricula: The Role of Academic Departments in Shaping the Study of ReligionRebekka King, Middle Tennessee State University19. Research: Religious Studies Research In an Era of NeoliberalizationGregory D. Alles, McDaniel CollegeEpilogueThe Gatekeeping Rhetoric of Collegiality in the Study of ReligionAaron W. Hughes, University of Rochester, and Russell McCutcheon, University of Alabama