Thanks to Kevin Trainor for calling my attention to the fine departmental blog and inviting me to contribute. I enjoyed reading about what everyone is doing these days.
I retired from UVM and the Religion Department in 2009—after 44 years! When I started in 1965 Burlington was scarcely the vibrant town it is today; and as for the department, there were just three of us religion professors trying to more or less cover the whole field.
I certainly miss the students at 481 Main St. and my colleagues, but academic writing goes on as though it were an extended sabbatical. Blog readers might be interested in my new book, which came out last month, New Patterns for Comparative Religion: Passages to an Evolutionary Perspective (Bloomsbury Academic), and I’ve linked here to the front matter and complete Introduction as that gives the best overview.
Essentially the book is an intellectual autobiography in three parts: reformulating some of the basic concepts (‘world’, ‘sacred’) and figures (Durkheim, Eliade ) in comparative religion; reconstructing the concept of comparison and the idea of universal human-level behaviors; and suggesting linkages between comparative religion and what I call ‘evolutionary perspective’. The 13 chapters had been published in various places over the last 20 years, but brought together here because they show the steps on my path toward the overarching theme of the book. I have added the Introduction and Epilogue.
**Editor’s note: Prof. Paden’s work on New Patterns for Comparative Religion earned the recognition of a University of Vermont Retired Scholars Award for the 2015-2016 academic year.