Remembering J. Z. Smith - A Career and its Consequence - Emily D. Crews
21. On Articulate Choice
Remembering J. Z. Smith - A Career and its Consequence - Emily D. Crews
Vaia Touna [+]
University of Alabama
Vaia Touna is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She is author of Fabrications of the Greek Past: Religion, Tradition, and the Making of Modern Identities (Brill, 2017) and editor of Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity: Towards a Dynamic Theory of People and Place (Equinox, 2019). Her research focuses on the sociology of religion, acts of identification and social formation, methodological issues concerning the use of the category of “religion” in the study of the ancient Graeco-Roman world, as well as the study of the past in general.
Description
In this essay, originally a blog post published on The Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Vaia Touna discusses the importance of strategic choices, which she learned from reading the work of Jonathan Z. Smith. Smith’s idea that “less is better” has been significant for Touna when building a syllabus, making comparisons, and analyzing the contributions of other scholars.