Richard King, Professor of Buddhist and Asian Studies and Head of the Department of Religious Studies, has just published a major edited collection entitled Religion, Theory, Critique: Classic and Contemporary Approaches and Methodologies (Columbia University Press, 2017). The book provides an extensive overview to the study of religion, comprising of 56 chapters over 675 pages, including contributions from several colleagues within Religious Studies at Kent.

Religion, Theory, Critique is an essential tool for learning about theory and method in the study of religion. Leading experts engage with contemporary and classical theories as well as non-Western scholarship. Unlike other collections, the anthology emphasises the dynamic relationship between religion as an object of study and different methodological approaches and openly addresses the question of the manifold ways in which religion, secular, and culture are imagined within different disciplinary horizons. The collection is the first textbook that seeks to engage discussion of classical approaches with contemporary cultural and critical theories.

In addition to editing the volume, Richard has contributed a chapter entitled ‘The Copernican Turn in the Study of Religion’; Dr Ward Blanton and Professor Yvonne Sherwood have co-authored a chapter ‘Bible/Religion/Critique’; and Professor Jeremy Carrette has contributed no less than four chapters, including ‘The Psychology of Religion’, ‘William James and the Study of Religion: A Critical Reading’ (co-authored with Professor David Lamberth from Harvard Divinity School), ‘Foucault and the Study of Religion’, and ‘Globalisation and Religion’.

For further details, please see the publisher’s website