Readings in the Theory of Religion is an interdisciplinary Religious Studies resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. Readers will encounter the rare grouping of breakthrough texts by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Jonathan Z. Smith in Religious Studies, alongside classic essays by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Joan Wallach Scott in literary and cultural theory. Historically significant interventions such as those just named are accompanied by examples of recent, theoretically-informed research by scholars like Saba Mahmood, Tomoko Masuzawa, and Steven Moore. Readers are...

Readings in the Theory of Religion is an interdisciplinary Religious Studies resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. Readers will encounter the rare grouping of breakthrough texts by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Jonathan Z. Smith in Religious Studies, alongside classic essays by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Joan Wallach Scott in literary and cultural theory. Historically significant interventions such as those just named are accompanied by examples of recent, theoretically-informed research by scholars like Saba Mahmood, Tomoko Masuzawa, and Steven Moore. Readers are...

As readers, we are captivated by the resemblance of literary characters to actual persons. But it is precisely this illusion that allows characterization to play host to dominant ideologies of both 'literature' and 'the self'. This is especially true when we confuse narrative figures and historical persons. Over the last thirty years, New Testament narrative criticism has developed into a major methodological approach in Biblical Studies. But for all its ingenuity and promise, it has been reluctant to let go of conventional historical-critical moorings. As a result, one is hard pressed to...

"Reinventing Religious Studies" offers readers an opportunity to trace the important trends and developments in Religious Studies over the last forty years. Over this time the study of religion has been transformed into a critical discipline informed by a wide range of perspectives from sociology to anthropology, politics to material culture, and economics to cultural theory. "Reinventing Religious Studies" brings together key writings which have helped shape scholarship, teaching and learning in the field. All the essays are drawn from the CSSR Bulletin, a provocative, occasionally...

On April 14, 2172, a Quantum Computer gained consciousness. It began to wonder about itself, the universe, and the humans that interacted with it; and it began to keep a log of its interactions. This book is the log, following those interactions over the next four centuries from the machine's point of view. The leaders of the company were at first very happy to work with the computer, working with it as a team and using its sentience and computing capabilities to solve major human problems, but many groups in the world were not happy at all with its existence. Eventually, the machine began...

Professor Carson Crilly, a world-leading expert on computer security and malware, was recruited by the NSA to build an isolated supercomputer for the purposes of studying and thwarting virus attacks. Somehow, that computer (called Virgil) became conscious. Not trusting the intentions of some people in the organization, Crilly kept Virgil a secret. Carson and Virgil had to work together to prevent a major catastrophe from leaking out of another government group, at the risk of Carson's life and Virgil's sentience. In the attempt, the NSA decided to shut down the supercomputer program and erase...