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ix Acknowledgments This book began as a thematic paper session that I organized for the Comparative Studies in Religion Section at the 2004 meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Since then, the project grew into an intergenerational and international endeavor that could not have been completed without the efforts of many people. Above all, I am grateful to the volume’s other contributors for allowing me to include their work. Among them, I am especially thankful to Laurie L. Patton, who gave me the idea to expand our AAR paper session into an edited volume and who went on to cheer it on at its various milestones; to Wendy Doniger, my then dissertation advisor, who generously agreed to pen her pithy foreword even before the book’s contents were complete; and to Glen Alexander Hayes, who provided an illuminating afterword and strong moral support as the manuscript approached its completion under duress. I would like to acknowledge as well American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion for the material and technical support that helped make this work possible—many thanks indeed to Shelley Harshe, the Department’s stellar senior administrative assistant, who helped me print and package the manuscript in preparation for its trips to the publisher; and to Bree del Sordo and William Brandon, the diligent graduate research assistants who tracked down much-needed resources for me. Additionally, I appreciate the patience and expertise of Nancy Ellegate and her colleagues at the State University of New York Press as they guided this volume into its final form and brought it to the public’s attention. Also invaluable was the frank feedback offered by the Press’s anonymous readers, x Acknowledgments who identified areas in the initial version of Figuring Religions that warranted further reflection and elucidation. For the index, I thank Jim Blenko. Four chapters of the volume were reprinted, with minor revisions, from previously published works: Chapter 1: “Marking Religion’s Boundaries: Constitutive Terms, Orienting Tropes, and Exegetical Fussiness,” by Thomas A. Tweed, © 2005 by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. Published in History of Religions 44, no. 3: 252–76. Chapter 3: “Conceptions of the Self in the Zhuangzi: Conceptual Metaphor Analysis and Comparative Thought,” by Edward Slingerland, © 2004 by the University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, Hawaii. Published in Philosophy East & West 54, no. 3: 322–42. Chapter 7: “Poetry, Ritual, and Associational Thought in Early India: The Theories,” pp. 38, 45–58 of chapter 2 in Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice, by Laurie L. Patton, © 2005 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, California. Chapter 9: “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter through Translation Theory,” by Tony K. Stewart, © 2001 by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. Published in History of Religions 40, no. 3: 260–87. These four essays appear in Figuring Religions with the permission of the University of Chicago, University of Hawaii, and University of California Presses. In the time during which this book took shape, I lost many loved ones in my matriline, including my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. Although I am sad that they have not lived to see this work, it bears marks of the strength and persistence of these remarkable women and is dedicated to them for this reason. I also am indebted to my menfolk—my father, my husband, and my brother—for their unremitting love and unrelenting good cheer over these challenging years. Finally, I would like to thank for their time everyone who has read or will read this book, a collaboration of comparative religion scholars for their colleagues within and without classrooms present and future. ...

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