Sharing Trends/Topics in Religious Studies

[MarthUser]

I'm borrowing this from the History forum, but I was wondering if current and aspiring PhD students in religious studies would be willing to share noticeable trends in the focus of studies in their respective sub-fields. I'm asking partially for my own curiosity as to what other fields are doing within religion departments. I'm also asking on behalf of Master's level students who might be interested in pursuing PhDs in religious studies and are looking for some sort of direction on what might be good to study in their respective sub-fields

In my sub-field of American Religious History, I've observed the following topics and trends:

1. Historicizing secularism by exploring different dimensions of religious doubt and religious pluralism in American historical context.

2. Challenging conceptions of religious authority at different points of american history by delving into preacher-congregation dynamics or exploring shifting scriptural authority.

3. Relationship between race, gender, sexuality, and religion continue to demand attention in american religious history.

4. Exploring non-Protestant religions in the American context is vogue, especially in studies of religion's role in cultural exchange, assimilation, and empire.

Feel free to supplement, revise, or add to each other's lists as well. And if you have any particular programs/professors/books in those fields, feel free to add them as well. 

[marXian]

Yes, 4 for sure is really hot right now. To add to 3 and combine a bit with 4, I'd say that the category of "whiteness" is something that is just beginning to be theorized in religious studies particularly in relation to home mission, colonialism, empire, etc.

More broadly in RS, affect is still relatively prominent and looks to remain so for the foreseeable future I think (e.g. Donovan Schaeffer's Religious Affects)

The role of "genealogy" in religious studies theory & method is also, I think, coming into question. There was a fantastic panel at the AAR last year on genealogy that was intended to ask what is in need of a genealogy but in many ways, particularly during the Q&A the whole project of genealogy in RS was called into question.

Though there is a very, very small minority of people in my subfield (phil of religion/theology in the context of "secular" religious studies), those who are have been interested in the kinds of spaces that are generated by the genealogical dismantling of the category "religion." For example, you have "critical religion" folks (Craig Martin, Russell McCutcheon, etc.) who contend that the natural sciences "fill the void" so to speak once the concept "religion" is shown to be not a real "thing" out in the world. This conclusion, of course, raises interesting problems wrt genealogy, since Nietzsche or Foucault would have never accepted such a conclusion. So people in my subfield are interested in showing how engagement with theology or any metaphysical claims in general for that matter (often referred to as "crypto-theology") doesn't entail a commitment to the discipline's problematic past (e.g. Eliade and "phenomenology of religion"). Recent examples: Kevin Schillbrack's Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto and Thomas A. Lewis' Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion--And Vice Versa. There have also been some really great editorials in this vein over the last two years in the journal Critical Research on Religion, the editors of which are advocates for a position called "critical theory of religion" which is a critique of "critical religion."

[Rabbit Run]

On 4/12/2017 at 0:11 PM, marXian said:

The role of "genealogy" in religious studies theory & method is also, I think, coming into question. There was a fantastic panel at the AAR last year on genealogy that was intended to ask what is in need of a genealogy but in many ways, particularly during the Q&A the whole project of genealogy in RS was called into question.

Would echo this, albeit in a different key perhaps. I see a lot of people challenging certain genealogies that have become dominant in ethics/theology (i.e. the narratives of MacIntyre, Milbank, and Charles Taylor) through studies of figures/areas left out of these narratives. For instance, theres been more work on virtue theory in the 17th and 18th centuries, challenging the sort of declension narrative the above named authors can tell. 

[psstein]

I'm not a religion student, but I'm pretty current on NT/Early Christianity:

1. Non-historical-critical approaches to the NT are in vogue and will be for some time. There was a recent article in a pretty well respected journal about "queering John's Jesus."

2. Reader-response criticism continues to gain ground.

3. Renewed skepticism about the Two-Source Hypothesis

4. Recognition of earlier biases.