By Evan LeBarre
As a graduate student preparing to embark on my first large research and writing project, the colloquia with Dr. Alan Strathern were helpful in a number of ways, two of which I will briefly discuss here.
The first involved a discussion around what I might paraphrase as interest in and ownership of one’s work, and the other regards theory and its application.
In the first colloquium, Dr. Strathern discussed the writing process of his book, Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History. He noted that the work developed out of an article, “Transcendental Intransigence,” which he considered a “think piece” that took a unique approach to theoretical questions in Religious Studies. During that time, he said he stopped thinking primarily about what might be best for his academic career and began to write what he had a passion for. This piece, as well as the book, admittedly transgresses much of the work coming out of post-structuralist critical theory to reclaim a place for macro historical perspectives. He develops conceptual paradigms that classify vastly different regions and time periods to counter what he refers
to as the threat of a “monotonous granularity.” While the job market is often at the forefront of our minds as graduate students considering publishing our work, Dr. Strathern’s commitment to a macro perspective in the midst of an academy whose orientation is largely micrological reminded me that without interest in and ownership of my work, it cannot serve me or anyone else. One can make much more money with far less schooling in many other professions. Religious Studies scholars maintain a love for
the discipline and an ongoing interest in their particular subfield, and it is often in their unique theoretical interventions that they can “own” their work. As graduate students, we must navigate the politics of making important interventions in our fields without making
enemies, and Strathern reminds us not to lose sight of our unique perspectives.
In the second colloquium, which focused more on the substance of the
introduction and first chapter of the book, I found one question and one comment asked by faculty particularly helpful. The first came Dr. Jennifer Graber and was about Dr. Strathern’s writing process and how his conceptual paradigms changed throughout. The question was whether he always considered transcendentalist religions to be inseparable from immanentist religions (the inverse is not true in his paradigm), or whether this link became more apparent as the project progressed. Dr. Strathern answered that it was through the research and writing process that the conceptual paradigm matured, as it appears in the book. Dr. Oliver Freiberger, commenting on the macro-level mode of comparison, argued that different conceptual frameworks are appropriate for different levels of analysis, and it is only when our concepts fail to account for the level our work operates at that they become less useful. Global history, then, requires global concepts, while micrological studies often (and often should) discard them. These insights remind me to be reflexive about whether the concepts I employ are appropriate for a given project and whether they have the malleability to change as I immerse myself deeper into the work.
Evan LeBarre is a PhD student at the University of Texas.
