qualifies candidates for positions in religious studies. Several notable historians
of religions entered the field in this way, among them Ninian Smart, who
studied languages and philosophy, Burkhard Gladigow, with a background in
classical philology and law, and Fritz Stolz (1942–2001), a professor of Old
Testament before receiving the chair in the history of religion in the theology
faculty at Zürich.
Gladigow and Stolz share a preoccupation with visual religion and with
improving the vocabulary—the meta-language—of the study of religion. Stolz
coined some ingenious terms, such as ‘counter-world’ (Gegenwelt, processes
and phenomena that construct comparable structures of imaginary worlds) and
‘processes of exchange’, which he suggested we use to replace ‘syncretism’ (Stolz
2004). Gladigow was instrumental in launching the Handbuch religion-
swissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe(5 vols, 1988–2001), to date the only
dictionary within the field devoted to the terminological apparatus used to
describe, classify, interpret, and explain religious phenomena.
Gender matters
Every sensitive reader will have noticed the almost complete absence of women
from my account thus far. The major exceptions are the Islamicist Annemarie
Schimmel, former president of the IAHR, and the anthropologist Mary
Douglas. Other important women scholars have included the classicist Jane
Harrison (1850–1928) (Beard 2000, Robinson 2001); Lady Ethel Drower
(1879–1972), a key figure in the study of the Mandaeans; Mary Boyce
(1920–2006), the leading scholarly authority on Zoroastrianism throughout
the twentieth century; and Louise Bäckman, professor at Stockholm from 1986
to 1992, a Sami who devoted most of her career to the religious history of her
people. A notable figure within religious studies recently has been Ursula King,
a truly international scholar who studied in Germany, France, and England,
then taught in the UK, India, and the US. From a purist point of view, a great
part of her scholarly production belongs to the domain of theology (e.g. King
1996, 1997, 1998). Kim Knott, a student of King and Michael Pye, has written
on methodological issues of gender in the study of religion (Knott 1995).
Despite these figures, however, the study of religion in Western Europe has
traditionally been androcentric.
The only department in Western Europe ever staffed entirely by women was
the Department for the History of Religion at the University of Bergen, run
in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Ragnhild Finnestad (1940–1999), Ingvild
Gilhus, and Lisbeth Mikaelsson. Currently, however, men constitute the
majority of the permanent staff. In most countries today at least some chairs
are held by women, and some countries, not necessarily those with a reputation
for being progressive, are approaching numerical balance or a preponderance
of female scholars. Several women have held key positions in the European
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
WESTERN EUROPE
35
