Abstract
This paper offers a nascent attempt at best practices for the comparative method in a conference setting. Exploring the value in transcendence of traditions and specialization, it traces the preparation and outcome of a recent comparative hagiology panel and develops a list of possible steps for facilitating meaningful interchange between scholars. Building on Freiberger’s methodology for Comparative Religions, it applies a method specifically to hagiographical studies.
Highlights
A recent, popular text by David Epstein, titled Range, argues for the necessity of rethinking our current models of specialization.1 In it Epstein explores numerous areas that have benefited from the hand of a generalist, or at least someone who could see beyond their tightly-focused specialization.It seems that the interest in breadth, as well as depth, is returning to favor in the popular and scholarly contexts
Building on the work of Oliver Freiberger and his notion of the “illuminative” nature of comparative work, this paper will explore some areas of growth that are available to the scholars willing to transcend their traditional boundaries
How could one, whose expertise lies elsewhere, hope to speak definitively on a subject, while relying on translations and their own dilettantish curiosities? It is my suspicion that our particular scholarly communities, Religious Studies, and its partners in History and Literature, are ill-practiced at, and perhaps ill-equipped for, crossing over traditions in the interest of interdisciplinary perspectives and compelling theories that might expand our ways of knowing
Summary
A recent, popular text by David Epstein, titled Range, argues for the necessity of rethinking our current models of specialization. In it Epstein explores numerous areas that have benefited from the hand of a generalist, or at least someone who could see beyond their tightly-focused specialization. The stories often approximate each other with minor changes in framing details or underlying theologies It came as somewhat of a surprise to me after graduate school to realize that my colleagues, who had specialized in different languages and traditions, were working with saintly materials that could be considered strikingly similar to my own on a number of levels. The other scholar made nice, and later circled back to me to explain that there was almost nothing that could be considered similar about monasticism in the two traditions This highlights the historical terrain of Religious Studies and the resulting paradigms that we seen in the academic study of comparative religions.. In order to organize these questions into ways we might read texts in conversation and collaboration with other scholars and traditions, I offer here a nascent attempt at best practices for comparative hagiology in a conference setting
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