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Jason Josephson Storm

JJ Josephson-Storm

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm
Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Religion,
Chair of Science & Technology Studies

Office: Hollander Hall, Rm 302
Phone: (413) 597-2339
E-mail: [email protected]

Education:
M.T.S., Harvard University
Ph.D., Stanford University

Program Affiliations:
Asian Studies
Comparative Literature
Religion
Science & Technology Studies

Next sabbatical: 2027/28 academic year

  • · REL 101: “Introduction to the Study of Religion”
    · REL 102: “The Meaning of Life”
    · REL 103: “The Way of Power: A History of Occult Knowledge and Practices”
    · REL 200: “What is Religion? Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion”
    · REL 219 (STS): “Realizing Utopias”
    · REL 250 (ASST): “Virtue Ethics in East Asia”
    · REL 251 (ASST): “Zen Buddhism: History and Historiography”
    · REL 257: “Gods and Demons in East Asian Religion”
    · REL 259 (HIST): “Japanese Religions and the State”
    · REL 271 (ASST/COMP/WGSS): “Erotic, Grotesque, Sublime: Ghosts & Monsters in East Asia”
    · REL 290T: “Explorations of the Afterlife”
    · REL 297T (ANTH/COMP): “Theorizing Magic”
    · REL 300: “Dialectics and the Archaeology of Knowledge: Adorno, Foucault, and the Philosophy of History"
    · REL 301a: “Word Virus: Cultural Studies after the Linguistic Turn”
    · REL 301 (COMP/STS/SOC/WGSS): “Social Construction”
    · REL 308 (STS/SOC/POSCI): “What is Power?”
    · REL 316 (STS) : “Social Ontology”
    · REL 317 : “Disenchantment, Modernity, and the Death of God”
    · REL 327 (COMP): “Theory After Postmodernism: New Materialisms and Realisms”
    · REL 337 (ASST/COMP): “Zen & Philosophy: The Kyoto School & Its Legacy”
    · REL 350 (SOC/COMP): “Max Weber & Critical Theory / Rationalization & Its Discontents”
    · REL 354 (COMP) "Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosophizing with a Hammer"
    ·     REL 355 (STS/COMP) : “Michel Foucault: Confessions of the Flesh"
    · REL 401: “Senior Seminar: Genealogies of Religion”
    · STS 411:  STS Senior Seminar:“Monstrosity” 

Research Areas:

· East Asia (esp. 1600-present): Japanese Religions, History of Science in East Asia, Japanese and Chinese Philosophy, East Asian Religions, East Asian Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto.
· European Intellectual History (esp. 1600-present): Religion and Science, History of Science, History of Humanities and Social Sciences, History of Philosophy, History of Religion, Esotericism (spiritualism, occultism, theosophy, magic, etc).
· Theory:  Continental Philosophy (esp. Nietzsche, Foucault, Benjamin, and Adorno), Philosophy of Science, Science & Technology Studies, Critical Theory (Frankfurt School also postcolonial theory, critical race and gender theory), Sociological Theory (esp. Max Weber).

About:

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm received his master’s degree from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has held visiting positions at Princeton University, Harvard University, École Française d’Extrême-Orient in France and both Ruhr-Universität and Universität Leipzig in Germany.

Professor Storm is a historian and philosopher of the Human Sciences. He has three primary research foci: Japanese Religions, European Intellectual History, and Theory more broadly. At the heart of his work, lies an attempt to challenge conventional narratives in the study of religion and science. Storm has also been crafting innovative research approaches to address the void resulting from the collapse of postmodernism as a dominant academic paradigm.

Storm is prolific scholar, having produced of over thirty articles and book chapters in English, French, and Japanese, as well as several standalone translations from Japanese. His scholarly contributions include three single-authored monographs, two of which have received prestigious book awards. Storm has also coedited two special issues of journals and an additional monograph. (Google Scholar citations show the significant impact of this work.)

Japanese Religions: Storm’s scholarship initially concentrated on Japan in the Edo-Meiji Era (1600-1912), treating it as a central node in a series of semi-overlapping transnational networks. Drawing largely on archival sources written in Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch, he worked on the importation of the Euro-American concepts of “religion,” “science,” and “secularism” into Japan and traced the sweeping changes—intellectual, legal, and cultural—that followed.

This line of research culminated in his award-winning book, The Invention of Religion in Japan (2012), the first study in any European language to reveal how Japanese officials, under extreme international pressure, came to terms with the Western concept of religion by “discovering” religion in Japan and formulating policies to guarantee its freedom.

A secondary area of specialization is European Intellectual History (esp. English, French, German) from 1600 to the present with particular attention to the history of esotericism and the formation of the Human Sciences. 

This research came to fruition in The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (2017) which challenges the most widely held account of modernity and its rupture from the pre-modern past. Based on archival research in five different countries, this monograph traces the history of notions of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, it shows that the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world.

Theory: Storm also has an abiding passion for philosophy and Theory more generally. As an undergraduate, he began as a philosophy major with a focus on philosophy of science before his deep involvement with Asian philosophical traditions, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism, took him to a religion department where they were treated more sympathetically. In graduate school, he was trained in East Asian philosophy and Francophone (post)structuralisms. He then spent several years marinating in the work of Hegel and the Frankfurt School. But he has more recently been working on philosophy of social science and returning to an earlier interest in analytic philosophy. Storm juxtaposes these diverse philosophical lineages with insights drawn from postcolonial, critical race and gender theory. In this research he has been focusing on issues relevant to epistemology, virtue ethics, social ontology, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science.

This philosophical program has produced the award-winning monograph, Metamodernism:  The Future of Theory  (2021), which introduces innovative research methods for the humanities and social sciences by simultaneously radicalizing and transcending postmodernism. (Storm and his colleagues have recently launched Metamodern Theory & Praxis, a new journal dedicated to advancing scholarship, activism, and art that engages with Metamodernism and allied movements.)

Storm is currently completing a monograph “The Genealogy of Genealogy” (under contract) that provides a critical genealogy of the notion of “genealogy,” tracing its development through Foucault, Deleuze, and Nietzsche, while uncovering its suppressed history and messy entanglements with racialization and eugenics.

Finally, he is also developing an additional book-length manuscript on “Power,” which offerers a novel theory of causation for the Human Sciences (based on Metamodernism’s Process Social Ontology) and explores its implications to propose a new theory of power.

Publications:

Single-Authored Monographs:

The Invention of Religion in Japan. University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Winner: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion- Distinguished Book of the Year Award
Finalist: American Academy of Religion- Best First Book in the History of Religions

 

The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press, 2017.

(Audiobook Version)

 

 

MetamodernismMetamodernism: The Future of Theory.University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Winner: American Academy of Religion-Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion– Constructive-Reflective Studies

 

 

Coedited Monographs & Special Issues:

“Beyond Disenchantment: Science, Technology, and New Religious Movements” Nova Religio (special issue), coedited with Grant Shoffstall, 2021.

 

“Metamodernism and the Study of Religion” Religious Studies Review (special issue), coedited with Brian Collins, 2022.

 

 

Theosophy and the Study of Religion monograph, coedited with Charles Stang (Aries Book Series, Brill, 2024).

 

    1. Inoue Enryō 井上円了, “Prolegomena to an Argument for the Revival of Buddhism” (佛教活論序論, Bukkyō Katsuron Joron) translation, critical apparatus, and introduction, in Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan, 2021.
    2. Arai Hakuseki 新井白石, excerpt from “Tidings from the West” (西洋記聞, Seiyō Kibun) in A Concise Introduction to World Religions. 3rdedition, Roy C. Amore et al, edt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
    3. Yamada Toshiaki 山田利明, various Japanese entries. Encyclopedia of Taoism. Fabrizio Pregadio edt. London: Routledge, 2007.
    1. “Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory and Religion in Modern Japan by Clinton Godart” Review. Monumenta Nipponica, 2020 75(2): 381-384.
    2. “Magic in the Modern World, edited by Edward Bever and Randall Styers” Review. Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft,Summer 2018 13(2): 299-302.
    3. “Buddhism, Unitarianism, and the Meiji competition for Universality, by Michel Mohr” Review. H-Shukyo, H-Net Reviews, 2015, 1-3.
    4. “Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism, edited by Jacqueline Stone and Mariko Walter.” Review. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 2010, 12(2): 148-50.
    5. “Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System, by Nam-lin Hur.” Review. History of Religions, 2009, 49(2): 206-8.
    6. “Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, by Judith Snodgrass.” Review. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2005, 12: 80-3.