This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Jason Josephson-Storm | |
|---|---|
| Name | Jason Josephson-Storm |
| Birth date | 1976 |
| Occupation | Scholar, Professor |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Reed College; University of California, Berkeley |
| Notable works | The Myth of Disenchantment |
Jason Josephson-Storm is an American historian and philosopher of religion whose work examines modernity, secularization, and the intersections of science and religion. He is known for challenging standard narratives about disenchantment and for exploring religious naturalism, occultism, and metaphysical pluralism. His scholarship engages with intellectual histories across the United States, Europe, and Asia and dialogues with scholars in history, philosophy, religious studies, and science studies.
Born in 1976, Josephson-Storm completed undergraduate studies at Reed College before pursuing graduate training at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley he worked within intellectual milieus shaped by scholars associated with the History of Science Society, the American Academy of Religion, and the Modern Language Association. His education involved interactions with faculty linked to the Department of Philosophy at Berkeley and research libraries such as the Bancroft Library and the Huntington Library.
Josephson-Storm has held faculty positions including at the University of British Columbia and the University of California system. He has been active in departments and programs connected to the History Department, the Religious Studies Program, and the Science and Technology Studies community. His professional activities include participation in conferences organized by the American Historical Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Association for Asian Studies, and collaboration with institutes such as the Max Planck Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study.
His research interrogates narratives about secularization and modernity, particularly addressing arguments advanced in works by scholars tied to Max Weber, Charles Taylor, Peter L. Berger, and Talal Asad. Josephson-Storm’s landmark book, The Myth of Disenchantment, critiques readings of disenchantment associated with the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and sociologists like Émile Durkheim. He traces continuities of magical, occult, and religio-scientific practices through networks connecting figures in Britain, France, the United States, and Japan, engaging archives related to the Royal Society, the British Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Drawing on intellectual traditions linked to William James, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Bruno Latour, Josephson-Storm advances a critique of strong secularist historiography while aligning with pluralist and perspectival approaches associated with thinkers in the Continental philosophy and Pragmatism traditions. He dialogues with scholarship by Ronald Inden, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sethuraman Mayilvaganan, and Daniel Dubuisson on plurality, colonial knowledge, and religious epistemologies. His work engages debates involving the Philosophy of Science, Anthropology, Religious Studies, and the History of Ideas and resonates with contemporary writers like Marina Warner, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Karen Armstrong.
Josephson-Storm’s scholarship has received attention in venues including the Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, and academic awards from bodies such as the American Council of Learned Societies and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has been a recipient of fellowships and grants linked to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and university-based research awards. His work has been reviewed alongside books by Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker, Lawrence Pratt, and Robert Bellah in debates over modernity and secularization.
- The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (major monograph engaging archives from Europe and Asia) - Articles and chapters in journals and edited volumes alongside contributors from Harvard University, Oxford University, Princeton University, and Cambridge University publishing on topics connected to occultism, scientific cultures, and religious historiography
Category:Historians of religion Category:American philosophers