Religious Studies

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Religious Studies.

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Browsing Religious Studies by Author "Cowan, Douglas E."

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    The Celebrity Imprint: "Religion" and Identity Among Fans of John Lennon and Johnny Cash
    (University of Waterloo, 2023-05-23) Riddell, Kathleen; Cowan, Douglas E.
    Fandom-as-religion literature examines similarities between fandom and religion and, in particular, dimensions of the fan experience such as beliefs, emotion, and ritual. This area emerged in the last thirty years and includes perhaps twenty to thirty scholars who direct their attention to this phenomenon. A fundamental line of inquiry guiding this area of study is that scholars question why fandom looks so much like religion and why many fans use religious language and metaphors to describe the fan experience. This dissertation examines why fandom is often compared to religion, what scholars may learn from this comparison, and what similarities and differences of experience between fandom and religion say about fans experience as “religious” actors. “Religious” appears in quotation marks to signal that the fan experience complicates our understanding of the binary between the sacred and the profane by occupying an “in-between” space, in which fans find “direction, order, meaning and purpose.” Given the fandom-as-religion argument is often made in the absence of sufficient field data, I address this limitation by participant observation in New York and Nashville among fans of John Lennon and Johnny Cash, respectively, along with follow-up interviews. I argue that the premise of fandom-as-religion should be reconceptualized as “fandom-as-lived-religion,” a reflection of the reality that fans of Lennon and Cash develop at least part of their fan identity through three “points of articulation”: (a) the extension of the self, an externalized reality that remains part of the fan’s self; (b) the growth of the fan-celebrity relationship in the fan’s religious imagination, an act of the extension, and (c) the celebrity’s death, often a turning point in the fan’s relationship with the celebrity. These points are the focus of the three published articles that serve as the focal point of this dissertation, which asks the question whether the imagined relationship the fan has with the celebrity does religious work, by providing a multi-faceted point of identification. The concepts of the “religious,” the extension of the self, the religious imagination, and religious work come together to tell the story of how fans of Lennon and Cash create the fabric of fan identity that is of “religious” consequence. In the Introduction and Conclusion, I consider how the driving questions of lived experience of celebrity fans say something about the phenomena of religious “nones.” Concluding thoughts concern how celebrity fandom may help address modern religious experience and issues in religious studies as a field.
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    Out of the 'Broom Closet' and Into the Academy: The Development of Contemporary Pagan Studies and the Role of Scholarship in Shaping Legitimacy
    (University of Waterloo, 2022-05-30) Miller, Chris; Cowan, Douglas E.
    Contemporary Pagan studies is an academic field that explores the beliefs, behaviours, practices, and identities of contemporary Pagans, borrowing lenses from such fields as religious studies, anthropology, sociology, history, archaeology, and folklore studies. This field emerged within the last roughly forty years, and contains perhaps one hundred scholars worldwide who direct their focus towards this religious community. Two fundamental lines of inquiry guide this critical historical analysis of the field: how do academic fields develop, and how do fields interact with the communities that they study? Concerning the first cluster of questions – how fields develop – this dissertation explores how fields progress from a few scholars discussing their shared interests informally at a larger conference to having established hubs for sharing and presenting research, including conferences, peer-reviewed journals, university courses, and academic publications. This project documents the spaces where Pagan studies exists, traces how these hubs develop, and explores the pitfalls that scholars often experience during processes of institutionalization. Concerning the second cluster of questions – how fields interact with communities – this dissertation explores how Pagan studies interacts with Pagans themselves. Engagement assumes various forms, from practitioners who read publications, informants who interact with scholars in the field, students taking an introductory course, and researchers who are Pagans themselves. I argue that through these different interactions, scholars legitimize those subjects about which they write. Legitimation – which can also be understood as validating or authorizing a particular perspective – can occur both implicitly and explicitly. Scholars discursively legitimize communities through the labels that they apply, by positioning the community in a certain (generally favourable) way, or asserting that particular characteristics are essential to all Pagans. More explicitly, scholars legitimize communities when they speak on behalf of Pagans before media, public institutions, or in legal proceedings. This dissertation explores how scholars perform this legitimizing work, and the debates that occur within and outside this field regarding appropriate relationships between scholarship and advocacy. Although based on a relatively small academic field (studying a small religious community), this dissertation offers insights into such broader processes as how knowledge systems are constructed and the power of academia to legitimize ideas.