One of the students in "Theorizing Religion" asked me a stumper of a question yesterday. She's a returning student, who's spent years doing other things before coming back to complete her BA, and always brings a remarkable freshness and thoughtfulness to discussions. Her question was about a word she'd seen crop up in several of our articles which she realized she wasn't sure about. What, she asked, is "the Academy" - presumably not the training place for Jedi?!
The term has indeed featured in everything we've read so far. Winnifred Fallers Sullivan warned that where ordinary believers' understanding of religion of differs from that of the Academy it's not clear the latter should be deferred to. Jonathan Z. Smith argued that religious studies only deserves its place in the Academy if it lives up to Enlightenment ideals of intelligibility. Saba Mahmood suggested that the Academy is a privileged and precious place space where, unlike others, difficult questions can and should be left open.
So what is the Academy. you know, where they do the self-conscious thing called the "academic study of religion"? Once posed it's not so easy to answer! I said something about scholarship and was grateful when another student mentioned peer-review, but then felt obliged to add something about the academy's value so society at large. Which is? Preserving old knowledge and forging new? Providing materials and contexts for the education of a free citizenry? A space where the demands of the day are kept at bay, where long and short-term denizens can participate in the conversation of humankind?
Each of these raises questions of its own... many of which resonate with the particular questions the "academic study of religion" poses itself. Are theological schools part of the Academy? Monasteries? What about other professional and vocational schools? Law schools? Art schools? Research institutes in science or humanities? Think tanks? Liberal arts colleges? Continuing-ed curricula? A New School for Social Research?
(Unrelated) image: caladiums from idyllic Jefferson Market Public Library
