Comparison as Collaboration: Notes on the Contemporary Craft of Hagiology

This paper explores the potentially fruitful interplay between a set of practical and theoretical approaches developed to teach post-secondary students about accounts of dreams and of exemplars, in cases where these phenomena have been deemed significant by specific religious discourse communities. Incorporating insights from his participation in the Comparative Hagiology group, the author suggests—in particular—that the expanded perspective on hagiography proposed by Rondolino, Hollander, and others can serve as a fruitful vantage from which to survey both of these phenomena in the classroom, revealing some intriguing correspondences between them. The author concludes by proposing some ways that the comparative hagiological classroom could be a particularly productive learning environment, and one that directly addresses some of the challenges of contemporary post-secondary education (from both the instructors’ and students’ perspectives).

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confidence: 82%

The Oneiro- and the Hagio-: Teaching about Dreams from the Standpoint of Comparative Hagiology

Jensen

2024

“…The historical ties to Western Christianity render its ability to encompass the wide range of exemplary religious individuals in our world awkward at best. This issue has been carefully and fruitfully explored by a range of leading scholars in Hagiology (Hollander 2020;Rondolino 2017;Keune 2019;DiValerio 2019;Brown 1983;Hawley 1987;Rondolino 2019;Ritchey 2019). Even so, we have chosen to use the term in this paper as a signifier because it connects with a predominant culture in our context.…”

Section: "Saints" and "Religion": Refining Our Termsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Methods for Teaching Contemporary and Ancient Saints

French,

Forero Bucheli

2024

This paper argues that a comparative study of saints is not only a useful classroom tool for historians and religionists, but an exceptionally powerful locus of pedagogical insight and cultural understanding. By reframing contemporary consumptive patterns, media representations, and power discourses as religious vectors of saintliness, the professor has an opportunity to explore and assess cultural values, rituals, beliefs, worldviews, communities, traditions, and meaning making in the contemporary college student’s world. By acknowledging the dangers and possibilities of the category of saint while reframing the ascetical impact on developing subjectivities, we propose six pedagogical examples of how this might best be deployed.

“…12 However, see Sara Ritchey's list of questions under the heading "Intercession/Transformation" (Ritchey 2019). 13 I understand Hollander to be getting at something similar in his discussion of "hagiographical consumption" see(Hollander 2019). 14 For a study that attends to the latter specifically, see Hollander's psychosocial analysis of hagiography as acts of mediation that inscribe understandings and experiences of the hagio in the context of modern Cyprus (Hollander 2018).…”

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confidence: 98%

Dare to Compare: Reflections on Experimenting with Comparative Hagiology

Siebeking

2019

In this response essay, I consider Jon Keune’s proposal to prioritize the act of comparison over definitional agreement when beginning an exercise in comparative hagiology. Reflecting on my own experience as the respondent for a panel at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), which saw me comparing two very different “hagiographical texts,” I argue in support of Keune’s approach by stressing its advantage in pushing conceptual creativity and collaborative inclusivity. In the process, I accept Massimo Rondolino’s invitation to consider his working re-definition of “hagiography”, which I take as a starting point for thinking through some of the questions my panel’s unconventional primary texts raise and how they might recommend revisiting our categories. In the end, I advocate for a capacious view of potential comparanda as one of the best ways to foster a process of continuous self-reflection and scholarly development.