About
I am currently Chair & Associate Professor of Religion at Williams College. I have three primary research foci: Japanese Religions, European intellectual history, and Theory. The common thread to my research is an attempt to decenter received narratives in the study of religion and science. My main targets have been epistemological obstacles, the preconceived universals which serve as the foundations of various discourses. I have also been working to articulate new research models for Religious Studies in the wake of the collapse of poststructuralism as a guiding ethos in the Humanities.
Education
Ph.D. Stanford 2006
MTS Harvard University 2001
Publications
The Invention of Religion in Japan. Monograph. University of Chicago Press, 2012. (Winner: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion- Distinguished Book of the Year Award- 2013)
The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Monograph, University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2017.
Projects
I am currently completing a further book length manuscript–Absolute Disruption: The Future of Theory after Postmodernism, which attempts to extend the insights of the Hegelian tradition (particularly as articulated by the Frankfurt School) to one of the central impasses of the discipline of Religious Studies—the disintegration of its central term “religion.” It articulates new methods for the social sciences by simultaneously radicalizing and moving past the postmodern turn.
