A Riposte to James C. Ungureanu’s Review of “An Unnatural History of Religions” (2019)

July 31, 2022 Leonardo Ambasciano

Some remarkable works published by Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Personal collection. (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Leonardo Ambasciano.

James Ungureanu has recently published a peculiar review of my book An Unnatural History of Religions in the March 2022 issue of Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society. At the very beginning of his contribution, Ungureanu claims that I was “upset” when I “bemoan[ed] rather petulantly” (sic), “lamented”, and “artlessly proclaim[ed in my book my] deepest convictions”, that is, some Lapalissian statements that are part of the current scientific consensus and are directed against pseudohistorical assertions and neocreationist, esotericist, and spiritualist dogmas that characterise the past, and to some extent the present, of the academic field known as History of Religions. I was certainly not “upset” when I wrote the uncontroversial lines that managed to provoke such a defensive reaction in the reviewer. However, being “upset” is exactly the emotional state I was in after reading Ungureanu’s review.

My J. Z. Smith is a pheneticist (sort of)

April 30, 2022 Leonardo Ambasciano

“Linnaeus gave us a way of talking about the diversity of grasses” (Jonathan Z. Smith in Sinhababu 2008). Title page of the 10th edition of Systema naturæ (1758) by Carl Linnaeus. Göttingen State and University Library, signature <8 H NAT I, 7105 <10>:1>. Source: Wikipedia.

In late 2018, less than a year after historian of religion extraordinaire Jonathan Z. Smith had passed away, I submitted an abstract to an interesting conference organized by the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, entitled “When the Chips are Down,” It’s Time to Pick Them Up: Thinking With Jonathan Z. Smith. This post tentatively provides an account of what I might have come up with provided that my submission were accepted (which, alas, was not).

Eliadology and the Fallacy of Emotive Language

March 27, 2021 Leonardo Ambasciano

Fig. 1. Source: Rennie (2017). Fair use of the copyrighted material for edicational purposes, commentary, and criticism.

Any critical and epistemologically warranted comment against the old phenomenological paradigm in the History of Religions is usually declassed by interested apologists as unworthy of attention - like Eliade taught the field to do - and/or labeled in such a way as to elicit hatred and dodge the issue at stake. It is also a form of begging the question to strengthen one’s defence. And as such, it is a dangerous fallacy.

The deafening silence of Religious Studies

February 8, 2021 Leonardo Ambasciano

Sources in chronological order: HuffPost, 3 May 2018 (the bust in the middle was vandalized in 2018; in 2020 the statue was toppled by protesters); BBC News, 8 June 2020; BBC News, 9 June 2020; The Virginian Pilot, 10 June 2020; BBC News, 11 June 20… — Sources in chronological order: HuffPost, 3 May 2018 (the bust in the middle was vandalized in 2018; in 2020 the statue was toppled by protesters); BBC News, 8 June 2020; BBC News, 9 June 2020; The Virginian Pilot, 10 June 2020; BBC News, 11 June 2020; Sky News Italy, 14 June 2020; CNN, 19 June 2020. An updated list of monuments toppled or removed during the 2020 protests is available on Wikipedia. Composition © 2021, L. Ambasciano.

It’s quite mind-boggling how the most toxic scholars of the past in the academic study of religion(s) have escaped unscathed the BLM movement’s criticism or the fury of cancel culture. How come statues like those dedicated to Churchill, Washington, Columbus, Confederates, slave traders, and racists all the world over were defaced or toppled down last year while the busts of Mircea Eliade are still standing? How is it possible that a chair at the University of Chicago is still entitled to Eliade while cancel culture is reclaiming so many academic and intellectual victims almost on a daily basis?

A Pirandellian History of Religions

September 21, 2020 Leonardo Ambasciano

The first page of the English translation of Pirandello’s novella L’eresia catara, included in The Medals and Other Stories, New York: Dutton & Co., 1939, 177-188, and published without any indication of the translator. Oddly enough, here Lamis … — The first page of the English translation of Pirandello’s *novella L’eresia catara*, included in *The Medals and Other Stories*, New York: Dutton & Co., 1939, 177-188, and published without any indication of the translator. Oddly enough, here Lamis becomes a “Professor of Ecclesiastical History” [Copy kindly provided by L. H. Martin]

In 1905, Italian novelist and future Nobel prize laureate Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) published a short story entitled L’eresia catara (“The Cathar Heresy”). In his novella, Pirandello follows the pitiful personal and professional misadventures of Bernardino Lamis, a shy and modest Full Professor of History of Religions (professore ordinario di storia delle religioni) in an unnamed Italian University.

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