Ann Taves


Ann Taves is Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a former President of the American Academy of Religion. From July 2005–December 2017, she held the Cordana Chair in Catholic Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Taves is especially known for her work Religious Experience Reconsidered, stressing the importance of the findings and theoretical foundations of cognitive science for modern religionists.

Biography

Taves was born in 1952.
She received her bachelor's degree in religion from Pomona College in June 1974. She went on to receive her master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Chicago Divinity School in June 1979 and December 1983, respectively.
Taves married Raymond Paloutzian on 29 December 2007, in Santa Barbara.
In 2013, Taves received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of religion.
In March 2018, she gave the Gunning lecture at New College, Edinburgh on the topic "Religion as worldviews and as ways of life."

Works

''Fits, Trances, and Visions''

Fits, Trances, and Visions charts the experience of Anglo-American Protestants and those who left the Protestant movement beginning with the transatlantic awakening in the early 18th century and ending with the rise of the psychology of religion and the birth of Pentecostalism in the early 20th century.
It charts the synonymic language of trance in the American Christian traditions: power or presence or indwelling of God, or Christ, or the Spirit, or spirits. Typical expressions include "the indwelling of the Spirit", "the witness of the Spirit", "the power of God", being "filled with the Spirit of the Lord", "communing with spirits", "the Christ within", "streams of holy fire and power", "a religion of the Spirit and Power", and "the baptism of the Holy Spirit".
It focuses on a class of seemingly involuntary acts alternately explained in religious and secular terminology. These involuntary experiences include uncontrolled bodily movements ; spontaneous vocalizations ; unusual sensory experiences ; and alterations of consciousness and/or memory.

Other works

Works cited

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