Department of Religious Studies

Gregory Price Grieve, Associate Professor

Ph.D. Religion, University of Chicago 2002

gpgrieve@uncg.edu
http://www.gpgrieve.org/

Areas of Academic Interest

• South Asian religions with an emphasis in Himalayan traditions
• Theories and methods for the study of religion
• Ethnography of religion
• Religion, art and visual culture

Personal Statement

I am a specialist in South Asian and Himalayan religions. The core of my scholarly work is the ethnographic study of lived religion in Nepal. Drawing upon contemporary literary theory, cultural criticism as well as postcolonial and postmodern methods, I use such everyday accounts to reflect upon the nature of religion.  What makes a person? What is (a) god? What is ritual? How does religious practice create community? I argue against the presupposition that these answers lie only in canonical elite written sources. I strongly believe that to accurately address the phenomenon of religion, we need to focus upon the common physical dimension of day-to-day practice.

Recent Books

• Retheorizing Religion in Nepal. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2006.
• Historicizing ‘Tradition’ in the Study of Religion. (Engler, Steven and Gregory P. Grieve, eds.) Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2005.

Recent Peer-Reviewed Journals

• "The Rubin Museum of Art: Re-framing Religion for Aesthetic Spirituality,” Journal of Material Religion 3 (2006).
• “Forging a Mandalic Space: Bhaktapur, Nepal’s Cow Procession and the Improvisation of Tradition,” Numen 51 (2005): 1-45.
• “Cosmological Corrections: Mapping the Ideological Construction of Traditional Places in Bhaktapur, Nepal,” Studies in Nepalese History and Society 9 (2004): 375-406.
• “Signs Of Tradition: Compiling a History of Development, Politics, And Tourism In Bhaktapur, Nepal” Studies in Nepalese History and Society 7 (2003): 281-307.
• “Symbol, Idol And Murti: Hindu God-images and the Politics of Mediation,” Culture, Theory and Critique 44 (2003): 57-72 .

Book Chapters

• "Introduction." Co-author with Richard S. Weiss (Victoria University,New Zealand). In Historicizing ‘Tradition’ in the Study of Religion. (Engler, Steven and Gregory P. Grieve, eds.) Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2005.
• "Histories of Tradition in Bhaktapur, Nepal: Or How to Compile A Contemporary Hindu Medieval City. In Historicizing ‘Tradition’ in the Study of Religion. (Engler, Steven and Gregory P. Grieve, eds.) Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2005.

Online Articles

• "One and Three Bhairavas: The Hypocrisy of Iconographic Mediation" " Revista de Estudos da Religio - REVER. Year 5, Issue 4 (2005). (ISSN 1677-1222). PÛsGraduaÁ“o em CiÍncias da Religi“o - PUC-S“o Paulo
• “Scripture vs. Scriputralism, ” The Revealer, November 15, 2004
• “(Re)-Colonizing Tradition ,” Queen: a Journal of Rhetoric and Power, Winter 2002 (non-dead links)
  

Current Research

I am currently working on two projects. The first explores the use of flag symbolism in Pioneer Days, a parade which celebrates the entrance in 1847 of the first group from the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) into the Salt Lake City Valley. Tying the use of flags in the parade to Oran Hatch’s attempt for a constitutional amendment that would ban desecration of the American flag, as well as the early history of Mormonism, the project explores the relationship between religious groups and the greater imagined American community. It asks: What does it mean to be religious in America? What does it mean to be religiously American?

My second area of current research explores how and why mandalas have been translated from Asian into American Society. The question driving my research is, “How did mandalas transform from ritual devices into spiritual representations of the self?” What I have found is that the contemporary “globalized” mandala has a far more complicated and interesting genealogy than just the simple imposition of an imperialistic western category onto a (post)colonized visual discourse. “Mandala” appears to be a dialectical image, composed of densely interwoven cross-cultural visual rhetorics, both Eastern and Western, both ancient and modern, which focus on the use of material images in specific in situ environments.

Statement of Teaching

I approach teaching as an intellectual and creative endeavor that is an important element of my own research and scholarship. Like the curious problems that drive my own research, I believe the key for creating in students the habit of life-long learning is posing curious questions; excellent teachers make the material interesting and pertinent to students. Curiosity is important, because effective teachers can use it to instill in students the resources to critically research, think and write about their self-directed inquiries. Teaching is a type of apprenticing, which operates through the asking of increasingly sophisticated questions that speak to each student's zone of development and the bridging of knowledge which challenges students to tackle new concepts, rethink prejudices, and critically re-examine their views of reality.

Courses Taught

• REL 109: Religion and Contemporary Culture
• REL 111: Introduction to Non-Western Religion
• HSS 206: Introductory Seminar on Art, Religion and Visual Culture
• REL 223: Hinduism
• REL 298: Thinking About Religion
• REL 318 Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion
• REL 323: Religious Movements and Communities: Selected Topics
• REL 324 Philosophical Issues in Religion
• REL 351: Religion and Traditional Societies
• REL 356 Religion and Colonialism
• REL 365: Myth and Theory
• REL 368 Religion in South Asia: Selected Topics