Laurie L. Patton – författare

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 reader through several compelling case studies, Patton identifies two trends of the ’80s and ’90s that fueled that rise: the growth of multicultural identity politics, which enabled a form of volatile public debate she terms “eruptive public space,” and the advent of the internet, which offered new ways for religious groups to read scholarship and respond publicly. These controversies, she shows, were also fundamentally about something new: the very rights of secular, Western scholarship to interpret religions at all.Patton’s book holds out hope that scholars can find a space for their work between the university and the communities they study. Scholars of religion, she argues, have multiple masters and must move between them while writing histories and speaking about realities that not everyone may be interested in hearing.

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.

Authority, Anxiety, and Canon elucidates a principle fundamental to Hinduism's self-understanding-the Veda-while at the same time examining the methodological issues of the role of canon in religious tradition. Spanning the early periods of Indian religious history up to the twentieth century, the book combines theoretical sophistication and detailed scholarship to produce one of the first comprehensive works on Vedic interpretation since Louis Renou's Le Destin Du Veda.

Authority, Anxiety, and Canon elucidates a principle fundamental to Hinduism's self-understanding-the Veda-while at the same time examining the methodological issues of the role of canon in religious tradition. Spanning the early periods of Indian religious history up to the twentieth century, the book combines theoretical sophistication and detailed scholarship to produce one of the first comprehensive works on Vedic interpretation since Louis Renou's Le Destin Du Veda.

Assessing the state of the study of myth, this text explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course that takes into account both the comparative and the contextual issues raised since 1985.

Assessing of the state of the study of myth, this text explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course that takes into account both the comparative and the contextual issues raised since 1985.

This book explores aspects of Sanskrit cultural production from the last two centuries, paying attention to Sanskrit’s inherently dialogical nature and pluralism within Indian history. It demonstrates how the use of classical Sanskrit in the present creates conversations with established practices of the past, and suggests that the decision to use Sanskrit at all is, in a postcolonial world, to enter into a dialogue between tradition and modernity. Throughout the modern period Sanskrit writers, speakers, and proponents have continually engaged with interlocutors both near and far. They have addressed historical events and contemporary social issues, embraced other forms of literature, and experimented with new genres. The volume reflects on the various registers in which Sanskrit writing can appear, the relationship with established and new religious traditions, the performative aspects of Sanskrit, and its role in teaching and learning. Highlighting the multiplicity of Sanskrit, the book will be of particular interest to scholars of religious studies, language, literature, and South Asian studies.