The Grammar of Racism: Religious Pluralism and the Birth of the Interdisciplines
This article reframes the history of religious studies by excavating a central context for its formal consolidation as an academic field: university containment of antiracist student movements. It chronicles this process as it occurred at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) between 1960 and 1975. Student...
| Published in: | Journal of the American Academy of Religion |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2018]
|
| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
|
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Harvard Divinity School
/ Racism
/ Liberation theology
/ Interdisciplinarity
/ Science of Religion
/ History 1960-1975
|
| RelBib Classification: | AA Study of religion AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AX Inter-religious relations |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This article reframes the history of religious studies by excavating a central context for its formal consolidation as an academic field: university containment of antiracist student movements. It chronicles this process as it occurred at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) between 1960 and 1975. Student activists appealed to liberation theologies in demanding that HDS take direct, redistributive action against racism and militarism. Administrators responded with rejoinders to a practice of cross-cultural encounter, sympathetic dialogue, and pluralism. Decades before the critique of religion entered a mainstream scholarly lexicon, HDS students attacked this discourse as a technology of racial formation, which separated proper civil subjects from extremists lacking discipline. Meanwhile, as pluralism emerged as the preferred approach to the study of religion at Harvard and around the nation, it circumscribed the field’s critical possibilities. No more would religion provide ground for materialist cultural critique; rather it would be a site for the celebration of positive difference. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfx049 |