Ritual Studies Series
The interdisciplinary field of ritual studies has grown steadily since its inception in the late 1970s. Beginning in religious studies, it quickly engaged both anthropology and performance studies and now implicates other fields such as literature, communications, gender studies, biblical studies, psychology, political science, law, medicine, sociology, and the fine arts.
Responding to this rapid international growth, the Oxford Ritual Studies Series publishes works on every kind of ritual. The books are written by scholars from around the world. Writers are from emerging fields as well as mainline academic disciplines.
The focus of each book is on ritual. Some books treat specific rites, ritual processes, or ritual systems, while others pursue general, comparative, theoretical, or methodological questions.
Addressing the concerns of contemporary readers, the series considers ritual across a wide geographical, historical, and methodological range. Some books are field-research based, while others are text- or image-based.
Books in the Oxford Ritual Studies Series address an international, English-speaking readership of educated, non-specialist readers, including students. Informed by careful scholarly research, these volumes are engagingly written to engender dialogue and debate in a diverse, cross-cultural audience.