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Book: Remembering J. Z. Smith

Chapter: 10. Transformed Agendas: Generalism in the Work of Jonathan Z. Smith and the Study of Religion (NAASR Panel)

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.39823

Blurb:

Unlike many who quote Jonathan Z. Smith’s claim that religion “is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar's analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization,” Frank focuses on these imaginative acts of comparison and generalization, concluding that, even to do their specialized work, all scholars of religion need to be, to some extent, comparativists and generalists.

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