Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies

The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies is both informative and provocative, introducing readers to key debates in the contemporary study of religion and suggesting future research possibilities. A group of distinguished scholars takes up some of the most pressing theoretical questions in the field. What is a 'religious tradition'? How are religious texts read? What takes place when a religious practitioner stands before a representation of gods or goddesses, ghosts, ancestors, saints, and other special beings? What roles is religion playing in contemporary global society? The volume emphasizes religion as a lived practice, stressing that people have used and continue to use religious media to engage the circumstances of their lives. The volume's essays should prove valuable and interesting to a broad audience, including scholars in the humanities and social sciences and a general readership, as well as students of religious studies.

'This volume presents the discipline's entire span, laying bare the range of its problems and ambiguities. Summing up: recommended.' J. C. Hanges, Choice, 'This is a text that will be of great use to seasoned thinkers in religious studies, as well as students who are here introduced to the field not through the lens of reified traditions, heroic theorists, or debunkers, but through 'occasions of working on the world in the idioms of religion … in order to raise questions and develop illuminating perspectives on human life itself'.' Susan E. Henking, Religious Studies Review, '… an excellent addition to a college or university library that supports religious studies, cultural studies or social anthropology …' Christine Love-Rodgers, Reference Reviews

Robert A. Orsi is Professor of Religious Studies and History and G. Craddock Nagle Professor of Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of several prize-winning books, including The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950, 3rd edition (2010); Thank You, Saint Jude: Women's Devotions to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (1996) and Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (2005).