Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith

Scholars of religion, philosophy, history, and other disciplines discuss such topics as the Gospel of Mark as reflection on exile and identity, deconstructing the Eliadean paradigm, studying Hinduism non-religiously, and the wandering of Homo Hellenisticus in an age of transformation. Only cited authors are indexed. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Company. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Willi Braun is Professor of Religion in the Department of History and Classics and Director of the Interdisciplinary Programme of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He is the author of Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), editor of Persuasion and Performance: Rhetoric and Reality in Early Christian Discourses (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), and editor (with Russell T. McCutcheon) of the Guide to the Study of Religion (Cassell, 2000). Russell T. McCutcheon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Religion and the Domestication of Dissent (Equinox, 2005), The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (2003), Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (2001), and Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (1997).