OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The median citation count of Method & Theory in the Study of Religion is 0. The table below lists those papers that are above that threshold based on CrossRef citation counts [max. 250 papers]. The publications cover those that have been published in the past four years, i.e., from 2022-01-01 to 2026-01-01.)

Article	Citations
Esoteric Practices in a Reflexive and Critical Perspective	12
Using the Emic–Etic Distinction to Understand the Medieval Christian Interpretations of Slavic Pagan Religion	11
How Do We Tell the Story of Medieval Copts? Inspirations from Burton Mack	6
Performative Animism	4
“The Field, at the Moment, Is Up for Redefinition”: Twenty Five Years of Manufacturing Religion	2
Discourses on Research Freedom in the Academic Study of Religion. An Overview	2
In Search of Rules for a Critical Study of Religion	2
Esotericism and Religious Studies: Historical Relationships and Contemporary Challenges	2
Entropy as Metaphysical Perplexity in Ibn ‘Arabī’s Sufi Thought	2
Putting the Persian Back in “Magic”: Problems with Ignoring Ancient Ethnographic Discourses	2
Pondering the Legacy of Geo Widengren: Isolated Genius, or Uncritical Supporter of a Band of Brothers?	2
Curators of Global Buddhism: A Critical Genealogy and Decolonial Reading of Contemporary Curatorial Practices in Buddhist Studies	1
Back matter	1
The Discursive Side of Sociological Institutionalism in the Study of Religion	1
The Typological Phenomenology of Religion – Resurrected: Managing a Legacy from Geo Widengren	1
“Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain”: A Critique of the Rational Choice Approach to Religion	1
“Reconstructing the Study of Religion”: Entering the Conversation from a Different Corner of the Academic World	1
On the Orientalism of Dana Logan’s Awkward Rituals	1
Front matter	1
Critical Religion and the Sociology of Religion	1
Transcendence: A Defensible and Fruitful Concept for Religious Studies	1
Neo-Perennialism and Mystical Exceptionalism	1
Redescribing Our Primary Expertise Or, In Praise of Promiscuous Curiosities	1
Debating Critical Religion: A Response to Timothy Fitzgerald	1
Metamodernism: A Multispecies Approach to Hermeneutics	1

What’s Alternative about Alternative Rationality in CAS-E’s Definition of ‘Esotericism’?	1
Antisemitic Charisma: A Critique of Max Weber’s Interpretations of Paul, Jews, and Charisma and Their Enduring Legacy in Religious Studies	0
Burton Mack’s Challenge to the Study of Religion	0
Voluntary Costly Signals in Religious Communities: A Political Interpretation	0
Our Incomplete Reckoning with the Study of Religion’s Past	0
The Awkwardness of American Exceptionalism	0
Breaking the Postmodern Deadlock: Metamodernism’s Methodological Revolution	0
The Case for Studying Non-Muslim Islams	0
Cognitive Artifacts in the Evolution of Cultural Systems of Beliefs and Practices	0
“‘Cause Even Though Perfect It’s Not/ It’s the Best Thing This World’s Got” – or Not?	0
Reflections on Wolfart, Challenges to Religious Literacy, and Course Design	0
Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective	0
Editor’s Note	0
What’s the Matter with You, Rock?!: What the Study of Daoism Can Say about Religious Images	0
The Realism of Discourse: Critical Reflections on the Work of Kevin Schilbrack	0
Religion as a Social Kind?	0
Speculative Realism and Religion: Irreduction, Objects, Forms, and Intensities	0
We Have Never Been Modern (Enough)	0
Understanding Chinese Governance by Critiquing ‘Religion’	0
The Discursive Study of Religion, Critical Realism, and the Social Reality of “Religion”	0
Front matter	0
Editorial	0
Front matter	0
Worldview Literacy as Educational Praxis	0
“What is critical religion?” A Response to Galen Watts and Sharday Mosurinjohn, “Can Critical Religion Play by Its Own Rules?”	0
Concepts of ‘Law’ as Both Tools and Objects in the Study of Religions: A Case from 1950s Ghana – or When may a Christian Slaughter a Sheep?	0
Awkward History, Awkward Theory	0
Survivals: The Stakes of Religious Literacy	0
Theorizing Awkwardness, with Style, in the Study of Religion: A Forum on Dana W. Logan’s Awkward Rituals (2022)	0
Queer(y)ing How We See	0
Speaking Theory to Power	0
The Eclipse of Morality: A Riposte to Lane, Wildman, & Shults’ “Paying the Piper” Commentary	0
Back matter	0
Method and Methodology in the Study of Religion: Making Sense of the Diversity	0
Meeting Moses Mendelssohn at the Mikveh: an Ethnodrashy	0
Learning from the Past	0
Taking Stock of the Academic Work of Geo Widengren: Some Observations on a Forgotten Classic and an “All-Round Historian of Religion”	0
Religious Studies in the Garden of Academic Delights	0
Back matter	0
Sex, Magic, & Rockets or the Implications of the Babalon Working for Theories of Belief and Rationality	0
How Do You Solve a Problem Like ‘Religious Literacy’?: Thinking with Wolfart’s ‘Religious Literacy’ Reservations	0
Introduction: Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective	0
Introduction to “On Whose Terms?”	0
A Response to Wolfart’s “Religious Literacy”: Some Considerations and Reservations	0
Scholarly Values, Methods, and Evidence in the Academic Study of Religion	0
Missionary Methodology and the Making of Aztec Human Sacrifice: Decolonizing a Concept	0
Metamodernism: A Response About Magic	0
Paying the Piper: History, Humanities, and the Scientific Study of Religion	0
Religious Literacy as Religion Literacy: A Response from the UK	0
Cringing at Benevolence	0

The Way Is Dark, the Truth Is in the Cave	0
Afterword – Global Esotericism	0
Critical Humanism and the Study of Religion: A Statement and Defense	0
Capital-T-truth: Stative Capitalization, Translation, and Comparing Theologies in Religious Studies	0
Ars Botanica: Art, Science, and Comparison in Religious Studies	0
Studying ‘Religion’ Critically and the Decolonial Turn: Lessons for Critical Terrorism Studies	0
Critical Religion Takes a Punch: Notes on a Scholarly Skirmish	0
Absolutely Disruptive: An Introduction to Josephson Storm’s Metamodernism Book Review Symposium	0
Redescribing, But Really, Finally Moving on From Israelite Origins	0
Hearing Hindu Stories	0
Attached Critique: Paranoid and Reparative Studies of Religion	0
A Normative Turn in the Study of Religions?	0
Response to “Reflections on Stanley Stowers’s New Realist Theory and the Study of Ancient Mediterranean Religion”	0
Tradition as Body	0
The Wildness of (Racialized) Experimentation	0
Imagining NAASR: Pasts and Futures	0
Emotion and Islamic Hagiology: A Post-taxonomic Approach	0
Esoteric Practices: of Secrecy, Resilience and Politics	0
Reading Texts as Bodies: Object Agency in the Age of Human Empowerment	0
The Realist Discursive Study of Religion	0
‘Belief’ and Anthropology, in Use and in Theory	0
Response to Symposium on Awkward Rituals	0
‘Religious Literacy’: Some Considerations and Reservations	0
Back matter	0
Beyond Boundaries: Scholarly Categories and the Apocryphal Mary in Text, Pictorial Art, and Iconography	0
On Redescribing Christian Origins	0
Here, There & Everywhere	0