The Proper Study of Religion : Building on Jonathan Z. Smith / Sam Gill.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In The Proper Study of Religion Sam Gill charts an innovative course of development for the academic study of religion by engaging the legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith (1938-2017), perhaps the field's most influential and important scholar in the last several decades. Smith was Gill's teacher and mentor for fifty years. Their careers coincided with the explosive expansion of the study of religion in secular universities in the USA beginning in the mid-1960s. Building on Smith's foundational legacy through creative encounters, Gill explores an extensive range of engaging topics including: comparison as essential to academic technique and to human knowledge itself; the important role of experience, richly understood, to both academic studies of religion and to religions as lived; play, philosophically understood, as a core dynamic of Smith's entire program; the relationship of academic document-based studies to the sensory-rich real world of religions; and self-moving as providing a biological and philosophical foundation on which to develop a proper academic study of religion with expansive potential. The foregrounding of human self-movement, new to the study of religion, is informed by Gill's considerable experience as a dancer and student of dancing in cultures around the world. The Proper Study of Religion honors the remarkable and challenging work of an unforgettable giant of a man while also offering critical assessments and innovative ideas in the effort to advance the remarkable legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith"-- Provided by publisher.