Blurb:

If we are to seriously consider what circumstances cause so many scholars of religion to tout themselves as people who “do” method and theory – and yet nevertheless end up with analyses that are relatively empty of both – then perhaps this has something to do with the very ways that we are first taught to professionally barter in those terms. In this chapter, Smith grapples with how the ghettoization of theory has transformed it into what is marketed as an attractive but ultimately unnecessary appendage to scholarship, which remains the model that is still embraced by many graduate programs in religious studies today.