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Faculty
- Ann Taves, Ph.D. |
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Ph.D. in History of Christianity and American Religion, University of Chicago Areas
of Academic Interest: |
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| Statement: Over time,
the focus of my research has shifted from answering historical questions
about religion to using historical materials to explore how people make
sense of ambiguous events and experiences that inhabit the indeterminate
space between imagination and reality, craziness and inspiration, fiction
and faith. Increasingly, in other words, my attention has turned to
the underlying processes whereby people decide that experiences and
events are religious and then, in some cases, develop traditions of
practice to recreate them in the present. In exploring these processes,
I work comparatively to generate the detailed descriptive analyses favored
by scholars of religion and to explore the naturalistic explanations
developed by researchers in the social and natural sciences.
As holder of the Virgil Cordano OFM Chair in Catholic Studies, I teach a sequence of four advanced undergraduate courses in Catholic Studies, each designed to illuminate the tradition from a different perspective. Two of the courses explore the way the tradition has been transmitted over time and across cultures. The first begins with the emergence of Christianity as a new religious movement and focuses on the way the Catholic tradition has defined, maintained, and transmitted its understanding of orthodoxy. The second focuses on the way the tradition has adapted and changed through interactions with different cultures and traditions around the world. The second set of two courses uses Catholicism to examine the way that a particular tradition has navigated its way through the challenges of the modern era. The first does so in relation to modern thought, focusing on the problem of revelation; the second in relation to modern political institutions, focusing on conceptions of the self and society. Current
Projects and Research:
• “Revelation”
and “Hierophany” as concepts in and for the study of religion.
• Channeled Entities and Revealed Texts: A Group Psychology of Revelation. This research project looks at the process whereby new entities (seen, heard, or embodied) and/or new texts emerge. The focus of my analysis is on selected 20th century new age channelers compared and contrasted with earlier new religious movements, such as Mormonism, and non-religious phenomena, such as alter personalities, imaginary companions, fictional characters, and computer based avatars. • What Matters: Ethnographies of Value in the (Not So) Secular Age, co-edited with Courtney Bender in conjunction with the Social Science Research Council. Selected Publications on “Religious Experience”: • Religious
Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion
and Other Special Things (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
forthcoming 2009).
• “Special Things as Building Blocks of Religions,” in Robert Orsi, ed. Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009). • “Reading the Varieties of Religious Experience in Transatlantic Perspective,” Zygon (forthcoming 2009). • “Channeled Apparitions: On Visions That Morph and Categories That Slip,” Visual Resources 25/1 (2009): 141-56. • “Ascription, Attribution, and Cognition in the Study of Experiences Deemed Religious,” Religion 38/2 (2008), 125-40. • “Where (Fragmented) Selves Meet Cultures: Theorizing Spirit Possession,” Culture and Religion 7/2 (July 2006): 123-38. • “Religious Experience,” Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (Macmillan, 2004). • “Religious Experience and the Divisible Self: William James (and Frederic Myers) as Theorist(s) of Religion, JAAR 71/2 (June 2003): 303-326. • Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton: Princeton, 1999). • The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, University of Notre Dame Press, 1986 (hc), 1990 (pb). Recent Lectures and Essays on Catholic Studies: • “Catholic
Studies and Religious Studies: Reflections on the Concept of Tradition,”
in James Fisher and Margaret McGuiness, eds. Catholic Studies (New
York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming 2009).
• “Envisioning Catholic Studies,” Inaugural Lecture, UC Santa Barbara, February 13, 2006. • “Positioning Catholics Studies in American Studies, Global Studies, and Religious Studies,” Lecture, UC Santa Barbara, April 6, 2005. • “Negotiating the Boundaries between Religious Studies and Theological Studies,” Opening Convocation, Graduate Theological Union, September 22, 2005. • “Detachment and Engagement in the Study of ‘Lived Experience,’” Spiritus: A Journal of Spirituality 3 (2003): 186-208. Courses: Undergraduate: • RG
ST 15: Religion and Psychology
• RG ST 72: Religious Autobiography • RG ST 138A: Church, State, and Orthodoxy • RG ST 138B: Catholic Practices and Global Cultures • RG ST 138C: Catholicism and Modernity • RG ST 138D: Catholicism and U.S. History Graduate: • RG
ST 238: Seminar in Catholic Studies
• RG ST 200A: Proseminar in the History and Theory of Religion • Independent Study / Reading Group in Religion and Mind (email me for more information) Click here for course descriptions. Curriculum Vitae: |
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| Copyright
© 2009 The Regents of the University of California, All Rights
Reserved Department of Religious Studies | University of California | Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3130 telephone: (805) 893-7136 | fax: (805) 893-2059 | http://www.religion.ucsb.edu |
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