The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies

Robert A. Orsi is Professor of Religious Studies and History and G. Craddock Nagle Professor of Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of several prize-winning books, including The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950, 3rd edition (2010); Thank You, Saint Jude: Women's Devotions to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (1996) and Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (2005).

• Introduction Robert A. Orsi; Part I. Religion and Religious Studies: The Irony of Inheritance: 1. On sympathy, suspicion, and studying religion: historical reflections on a doubled inheritance Leigh E. Schmidt; 2. Thinking about religion, belief and politics Talal Asad; 3. Special things as building blocks of religions Ann Taves; 4. The problem of the holy Robert A. Orsi; Part II. Major Theoretical Problems: 5. Social order or social chaos Michael J. Puett; 6. Tradition: the power of constraint Michael L. Satlow; 7. The text and the world Anne M. Blackburn; 8. On the role of normativity in religious studies Thomas A. Lewis; 9. Translation Martin Kavka; 10. Material religion Matthew Engelke; 11. Theology and the study of religion: a relationship Christine Helmer; Part III. Methodological Variations: 12. Buddhism and violence Bernard Faure; 13. Practicing religions Courtney Bender; 14. The look of the sacred David Morgan; 15. Reforming culture: law and religion today Winnifred Fallers Sullivan; 16. Sexing religion R. Marie Griffith; 17. Constituting ethical subjectivities Leela Prasad; 18. Neo-Pentecostalism and globalization Marla Frederick; 19. Religious criticism, secular critique, and the 'critical study of religion': lessons from the study of Islam Noah Salomon and Jeremy F. Walton.

'This volume presents the discipline's entire span, laying bare the range of its problems and ambiguities. Summing up: recommended.' J. C. Hanges, Choice