Some Foundational Considerations on Taxonomy: A Case for Hagiography

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.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dare to Compare: Reflections on Experimenting with Comparative Hagiology

Siebeking

2019

“…Lifshitz 1994;Rondolino 2019; French 2019) further explore the dysfunction of genre-based definitions of hagiography and suggest promising alternatives-as do I in forthcoming work.…”

mentioning

confidence: 94%

Comparison as Collaboration: Notes on the Contemporary Craft of Hagiology

Hollander¹

2020

A workshop on “comparative hagiology” over the course of three years at the American Academy of Religion has yielded not only a series of articles but an experimental methodology by which scholars hailing from different disciplines and working in different fields might collaborate in threshing out commonalities and entanglements in their respective treatments of holy figures. This article’s response to the workshop identifies three pillars of general consensus among the participants that serve as promising footholds for aligned innovation in our respective fields: That hagiography (1) is constituted not only in verbal texts but in a wide array of media, both material and ephemeral; (2) is best interpreted by attending substantially to the “processes” of thought, life, and society in which it is rendered; and (3) opens possibilities of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary comparison by way of the many family resemblances in how saints (or more broadly, religious and even para-religious exemplars) are rendered in transmittable media and mobilized for a particular group’s benefit. The article concludes by suggesting vectors for further development on these grounds, indicating how the category of “hagiography” affords a resource for interpreting unauthorized and apparently irreligious phenomena akin to sanctification, and calling for a professional and pedagogical ethic of collaboration that extends beyond any particular scholarly fruits of hagiological comparison.

“…Like "hagiography", the word "saint" is a heuristic device (albeit one informed historically and theologically by Christian tradition) that acknowledges a process of perfection within in a faith tradition. See (Rondolino 2019;Hawley 1987). 4 Rondolino 2017, p. 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dialogue and Destabilization: An Index for Comparative Global Exemplarity

Ritchey

2019

This reflection derives from a discussion that took place at the 2018 “Comparative Hagiology” pre-conference workshop of the American Academy of Religion. The goal during that meeting was to articulate points of dialogue for the comparison of exemplary figures in various historic, geographic, and faith traditions. Here, I offer an open-ended descriptive index as a heuristic device for beginning a comparative study, whether collaborative or single-authored. After positioning my inquiry from within my own field of study, medieval European Christianity, I offer a brief “test case” for the portability of the index by using its terms to think through a text that is widely-regarded within my subfield as deeply complicated and difficult to interpret, the Life of Christina Mirabilis. I conclude by re-describing some of the terms of the index and by inviting further re-description.