This prestigious Companion offers the most comprehensive survey to date of the study of religion. Featuring a team of international contributors, and edited by one of the most widely respected scholars in the field, The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion provides an interdisciplinary and authoritative guide to the subject. * Examines the main approaches to the study of religion: anthropology, the comparative method, economics, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology. * Also covers a diverse range of topical issues, such as the body, fundamentalism, magic, and new religious movements * Consists of 24 essays written by an outstanding team of international scholars * Reviews, within each chapter, an outline of a particular subfield and traces its development up to the present day * Debates how the discipline may look in the future * Represents all the major issues, methods and positions in the field

Author Biography

Robert A. Segal is Sixth Century Chair in Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen. His previous publications include Joseph Campbell: An Introduction (1987), Theorizing about Myth (1999), The Myth and Ritual Theory (ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), Hero Myths: A Reader (ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2000), and Myth: A Very Short Introduction (2004).