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Who Owns Religion?
Who Owns Religion? focuses on a period—the late 1980s through the 1990s—when scholars of religion were accused of scandalizing or denigrating the very communities they had imagined themselves honoring through their work. While controversies involving scholarly claims about religion are nothing new, this period saw an increase in vitriol that remains with us today. Authors of seemingly arcane studies on subjects like the origins of the idea of Mother Earth or the sexual dynamics of mysticism have been targets of hate mail and book-banning campaigns. As a result, scholars of religion have struggled to describe their own work to their various publics, and even to themselves. Taking the read...
Myth and Method
In confronting these tension, they provide an outline of the most troubling questions in the field and offer a variety of responses to them.
Bringing the Gods to Mind
This elegantly written book introduces a new perspective on Indic religious history by rethinking the role of mantra in Vedic ritual. In Bringing the Gods to Mind, Laurie Patton takes a new look at mantra as "performed poetry" and in five case studies draws a portrait of early Indian sacrifice that moves beyond the well-worn categories of "magic" and "magico-religious" thought in Vedic sacrifice. Treating Vedic mantra as a sophisticated form of artistic composition, she develops the idea of metonymy, or associational thought, as a major motivator for the use of mantra in sacrificial performance. Filling a long-standing gap in our understanding, her book provides a history of the Indian interpretive imagination and a study of the mental creativity and hermeneutic sophistication of Vedic religion.
The Indo-Aryan Controversy
The articles in this survey of the Indo-Aryan controversy address questions such as: are the Indo-Aryans insiders or outsiders?
Jewels of Authority
The essays in this collection address the problem of Hindu women's relationship to authority, both within and without the textual traditions of Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi, and English. The authors adopt a method of close textual and ethnographic reading, which results in some surprisingly new and subtle ways of interpreting older, more "classical" discourses, such as Veda and Mimamsa, as well as newer discourses, such as the RSS use of the Devimahatmya.
Angel's Task
Laurie Patton's Poems in Biblical Time give contemplative voice to the reading cycle of the Jewish year. Replete with ancient imagery coming alive in the language of the present, each poem weaves scripture into everyday life while refocusing a single Biblical moment. In her vision here, angels are also messengers sent to earth with a single piece of work to accomplish. Although we are of so many minds burdened with so many tasks, as readers we again receive messengers and the messages they bring. Recognition may come in the angelic voice, and we can meet angels and ourselves at the tent door in the heat of the day. Angel's Task urges continuous awe-or trembling.
Notes from a Maṇḍala
How can we adequately provide housing when disaster strikes, whether that disaster is weather related, like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, happens in a matter of minutes from an earthquake or tsunami, through a slow process like rising sea levels, or is the result of civil disorder or poverty? There is an urgent need for safe, sustainable housing designs that are cheap to build, environmentally friendly, and hardy enough to withstand severe environmental conditions. Not only is there climate change to contend with, but there are millions of people, right now, who do not have safe or adequate housing. In Urgent Architecture Bridgette Meinhold showcases 40 successful emergency and long-term housing projects-from repurposed shipping containers to sandbag homes. She surveys successful structures as well as highlighting promising projects that are still being developed. Every one is quickly deployable, affordable, and sustainable. This book is an essential resource for those who are interested in green building, sustainable design, eco-friendly materials, affordable housing, material reuse, and humanitarian relief.
The Strides of Vishnu
Books about Hinduism often begin by noting the immense size and complexity of the subject. Hinduism is vast and diverse, they say. Or it doesn't exist at all -- Hinduism is merely a convenient (and foreign) term that masks a plurality of traditions. In either case, readers are discouraged by the thought that they are getting only a tiny sample or a shallow overview of something huge and uniquely difficult. This book is designed to be accessible and sophisticated, holding the reader's interest in the dynamic sequence of ideas through time and place. Each of the 12 chapters combines historical material with key religious, scientific and philosophical ideas, supported by substantial quotations from scriptures and other texts. Historic places and persons are fleshed out as actors in a narrative about the relation of the sacred to ordinary existence as it is mediated through arts, sciences, rituals, and philosophical ideas. Although many books introduce the Hindu tradition, this is the first with a broad historical and cultural focus that emphasizes archaeological as well as textual evidence.
Out of Many Faiths
The former faith adviser to Barack Obama draws on his personal experience as a Muslim in America to examine the importance of religious diversity in the nation's cultural, political, and economic life. He explores how religious language has given the United States some of its most enduring symbols and inspired its most vital civic institutions.
Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse
Contributors examine white feminist theology's misappropriations of Native North American women, Chinese footbinding, and veiling by Muslim women, as well as the Jewish emancipation in France, the symbolic dismemberment of black women by rap and sermons, and the potential to rewrite and reclaim canonical stories.
