J. Barton Scott

J. Barton Scott (Ph.D. Religion, Duke University, 2010) researches the global intellectual and cultural history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a focus on South Asia and its transnational connections. He teaches courses on social and cultural theory, religion in political thought, and media and material religion. He is the author of Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule (University of Chicago/Primus 2016; Honourable Mention for the 2018 Harry Levin Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association) and Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India (University of Chicago/Permanent Black/ Folio Books, 2023), and the co-editor of Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia (Routledge, 2016). His writing can be found in The Immanent Frame, The Revealer, Comparative Studies of Society and History, Modern Intellectual History, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and elsewhere. Recent work includes the article “Is Anglicanism a Religion?: Empire, Establishmentarianism, and Thomas Macaulay’s Critique of William Gladstone,” published in Victorian Studies.
 
Scott is currently working on two books. The first is about guru culture in southern California in the years around World War II. The second, a collaborative project, is about the powers of the image in South Asian religions.