J. Barton Scott

J. Barton Scott is a theorist of religion who works on the global intellectual and cultural history of the long nineteenth-century, with a focus on South Asia and its connections to the British empire. He has been particularly interested in modern Hindu thought, religious polemics, and anticolonialism. He is the author of Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule (Chicago) and the co-editor of Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia (Routledge), and he teaches courses on social and cultural theory, religion in political thought, and media and material religion.  

Scott’s current book project, Slandering the Sacred: Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India, is a study of the sections of the Indian Penal Code that criminalize wounding “religious feelings.” The book situates these laws within the history of religious polemics in nineteenth and early twentieth century India, particularly those of the Arya Samaj, as well as within the global history of liberal ideas about free speech, secular governance, and print publicity. As a whole, the book asks how affect or emotion became part of state efforts to define and govern religion, both within India and beyond. 

Publications

Books

• Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016) 
• Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia. Co-edited with Brannon Ingram and SherAli Tareen (London: Routledge, 2016)

Articles

• “Translated Liberties: Karsandas Mulji’s Travels in England and the Anthropology of the Victorian Self,” Modern Intellectual History 16, no. 3 (2019): 803-33.
• "Only Connect: Three Reflections on the Sociality of Secularism," Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 6, no. 1 (2019): 48-69.
• “How to Defame a God: Public Selfhood in the Maharaj Libel Case,” in Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia, eds. Brannon Ingram, J. Barton Scott, and SherAli Tareen, special issue of South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies 38 no. 3 (2015): 387-402.
• "What is a Public? Notes from South Asia" (co-authored with Brannon Ingram), in Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia, eds. Brannon Ingram, J. Barton Scott, and SherAli Tareen, special issue of South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies 38 no. 3 (2015): 357-370.
• "Aryas Unbound: Print Hinduism and the Cultural Regulation of Religious Offense,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 35, no. 2 (2015): 294-309.
• “Luther in the Tropics: Karsandas Mulji and the Colonial ‘Reformation’ of Hinduism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83, no. 1 (2015): 181-209.
• “Unsaintly Virtue: Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Modern Hindu Hagiography,” Journal of Hindu Studies 7, no. 3 (2014): 371-391.
• “Comic Book Karma: Visual Mythologies of the Hindu Modern,” in Inscriptions, eds. Jeremy Stolow and Lisa Gitelman, special issue of Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 4, no. 2 (2010): 177-197.
• “Miracle Publics: Theosophy, Christianity, and the Coulomb Affair,” History of Religions 49, no. 2 (2009): 172- 196.

Book Chapters

• A Commonwealth of Affection: Modern Hinduism and the Cultural History of the Study of Religion." In Constructing Nineteenth Century Religion, eds. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2019).
• “The Supernatural and Colonialism.” In Super Religion, ed. Jeffrey J. Kripal, New York: Palgrave, 2016.

Culture Criticism

• "Mucho Mucho Amor, Mucho Mucho Religion," The Revealer, October 2020
• "Anand Patwardhan's Reason (Vivek),"Journal of Religion & Film 22, no. 2 (October 2018).
• "Religion and Death on French Television: On Watching Ad Vitam," Journal of Religion & Film 22, no. 2 (October 2018).
• When Zombies Ate Quebec: On Watching Les Affamés," Journal of Religion & Film 21, no. 2 (October 2017).