Beginnings in Ritual Studies - Softcover

Beginnings in Ritual Studies lays the groundwork for the interdisciplinary study of ritual by broadening the conception of it and articulating its connections to a wide range of cultural activities. Accessible to scholars and students, Beginnings addresses such fundamental issues as definitions, types, and theories of ritual. The volume integrates field research and theory in considering ritual's relation to religious, civil, medical, and theatrical dimensions of culture. The first and second editions garnered widespread praise from the scholarly community and became a standard work in the burgeoning field of ritual studies. In this third edition, Grimes adds a new preface and revises the descriptive and theoretical essays that form the core of the volume.

Ronald L. Grimes is the author of several books on ritual, most recently The Craft of Ritual Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014). He resides in Waterloo, Ontario, where he is Director of Ritual Studies International and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. Recently, he has held the following positions: Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at Charles University, Prague in the Czech Republic; Senior Researcher and Senior Lecturer at Yale University; and Chair of Ritual Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.