Theorizing Religions Past

Harvey Whitehouse is professor of anthropology and director of postgraduate studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Queen's University Belfast. He is co-director with E. Thomas Lawson of the newly established Centre for Cognition and Culture at Queen's University Belfast. He is currently the recipient of two major British Academy grants. His previous books include Inside the Cult: religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea (1995), Arguments and Icons: divergent modes of religiosity, (2000), The Debated Mind: evolutionary psychology versus ethnography (2001), and Modes of Religiosity: a cognitive theory of religious transmission (AltaMira, 2004). Luther H. Martin, professor of religion at the University of Vermont, is the author of Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction (1987), an editor of Theoretical Frameworks for the Study of Graeco-Roman Religions (2002), and author of numerous articles in this area of the history of religions. In addition, he is the author of numerous articles on theory and method in the study of religion, an editor of several volumes of essays on this topic, as well as an editor of a volume on The Academic Study of Religion During the Cold War (2001). He is currently engaged in research on Graeco-Roman religions from the perspective of cognitive science.