Barton Scott
Areas of interest
- Secularism
- Postcolonial theory and anticolonial thought
- Religion and law
- Religion, media, and popular culture
- Public sphere theory
- Affect theory
- History of the study of religion
- Modern South Asia
- Modern Hinduism
Biography
J. Barton Scott (Ph.D. Religion, Duke University, 2009) works on the intellectual and cultural history of religion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a focus on South Asia and its global connections. He teaches courses on social and cultural theory, media and material religion, and religion in political thought. He is the author of Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule (University of Chicago, 2016) and Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India (Chicago, 2023), the co-editor of Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia (Routledge, 2016), and the lead investigator on the SSHRC-funded website The Global Blasphemer: An Atlas of Insult. He is currently working on a book called The Piercing Virtue: Isherwood's Guru in Adorno's Los Angeles, which takes the unlikely friendship between a British novelist and a Bengali monk as the starting point for a theoretically-inflected inquiry into global guru culture—into renunciation as piercing virtue—at mid-twentieth century.
Select publications
Books
- Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023; Delhi: Permanent Black, 2024).
- Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)
- Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia. Co-edited with Brannon Ingram and SherAli Tareen (London: Routledge, 2016)
Articles
- “Translated Liberties: Karsandas Mulji’s Travels in England and the Anthropology of the Victorian Self,” Modern Intellectual History 16, no. 3 (2019): 803-33.
- "Only Connect: Three Reflections on the Sociality of Secularism," Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 6, no. 1 (2019): 48-69.
- “How to Defame a God: Public Selfhood in the Maharaj Libel Case,” in Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia, eds. Brannon Ingram, J. Barton Scott, and SherAli Tareen, special issue of South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies 38 no. 3 (2015): 387-402.
- "What is a Public? Notes from South Asia" (co-authored with Brannon Ingram), in Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia, eds. Brannon Ingram, J. Barton Scott, and SherAli Tareen, special issue of South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies 38 no. 3 (2015): 357-370.
- "Aryas Unbound: Print Hinduism and the Cultural Regulation of Religious Offense,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 35, no. 2 (2015): 294-309.
- “Luther in the Tropics: Karsandas Mulji and the Colonial ‘Reformation’ of Hinduism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83, no. 1 (2015): 181-209.
- “Unsaintly Virtue: Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Modern Hindu Hagiography,” Journal of Hindu Studies 7, no. 3 (2014): 371-391.
- “Comic Book Karma: Visual Mythologies of the Hindu Modern,” in Inscriptions, eds. Jeremy Stolow and Lisa Gitelman, special issue of Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 4, no. 2 (2010): 177-197.
- “Miracle Publics: Theosophy, Christianity, and the Coulomb Affair,” History of Religions 49, no. 2 (2009): 172- 196.
Book Chapters
- A Commonwealth of Affection: Modern Hinduism and the Cultural History of the Study of Religion." In Constructing Nineteenth Century Religion, eds. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2019).
- “The Supernatural and Colonialism.” In Super Religion, ed. Jeffrey J. Kripal, New York: Palgrave, 2016.
Culture Criticism
- "Cosmic Horror in Spain: Review of Venus," Journal of Religion & Film 26, no. 2, October 2022
- "The Prince and the Whale: Review of Werckmeister Harmonies," Journal of Religion & Film 26, no. 2, October 2022
- "Cosmic Schlock: Review of 223 Wick," Journal of Religion & Film 26, no. 2, October 2022
- "Religion Lovecraft Country," The Revealer, February 2021
- "Mucho Mucho Amor, Mucho Mucho Religion," The Revealer, October 2020
- "Anand Patwardhan's Reason (Vivek),"Journal of Religion & Film 22, no. 2 (October 2018).
- "Religion and Death on French Television: On Watching Ad Vitam," Journal of Religion & Film 22, no. 2 (October 2018).
- When Zombies Ate Quebec: On Watching Les Affamés," Journal of Religion & Film 21, no. 2 (October 2017).