{"id":27,"date":"2026-07-11T14:16:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T18:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/jaj1\/?page_id=27"},"modified":"2026-08-05T09:00:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:00:59","slug":"jason-storm","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/jaj1\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t\t\t\t\"Jason\n

\n Jason \u0100nanda Josephson Storm\n<\/h1>\n \n Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Religion<\/strong>
\n Chair of Science & Technology Studies Program<\/strong>
\n Williams College\n \n \n Historian and philosopher whose archival research traces how religion and science have been constructed across Europe and East Asia, while his philosophical work engages core questions of knowledge, power, and meaning.<\/em>\n\n \n Email<\/a> |\n Google Scholar<\/a>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tAbout<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExpand<\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t

Jason \u0100nanda Josephson Storm<\/strong> <\/em>received his master’s degree from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has held visiting positions at Princeton University, Harvard University, \u00c9cole fran\u00e7aise d’Extr\u00eame-Orient (Paris), Ruhr-Universit\u00e4t, and Universit\u00e4t Leipzig.<\/p>\n

Storm is a historian and philosopher of the human sciences. His archival research, in multiple languages, traces how the categories of religion<\/em> and science<\/em> have been constructed, contested, and remade across Europe and East Asia. His philosophical work engages core questions of knowledge, power, and meaning in the human sciences-approaching them through historical and cross-cultural analysis, and building new theoretical frameworks from that vantage.<\/p>\n

He has published nearly forty articles and book chapters in English, French, Spanish, and Japanese, as well as several standalone translations from Japanese. His scholarly contributions include four single-authored monographs, two of which have received book awards. Storm has also coedited a monograph and two special journal issues. His books have been translated into Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. As of August 2026, Google Scholar<\/a> lists over 3,000 citations, reflecting its wide uptake across disciplines.<\/p>\n

Intellectual Biography<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Storm’s scholarship initially concentrated on Edo-Meiji Era (1600-1912) Japan. Drawing on archival sources written in Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch, he examined the importation of Euro-American concepts of “religion,” “science,” and “secularism” into Japan and traced the sweeping changes-intellectual, legal, and cultural-that followed.<\/p>\n

This work culminated in The Invention of Religion in Japan<\/strong><\/em> (2012), which reveals how Japanese officials, under intense international pressure, came to terms with the Western concept of religion by “discovering” religion in Japan and formulating policies to guarantee its freedom.<\/p>\n

Storm also works on European history (especially in English, French, and German sources) from 1600 to the present, particularly in relation to the history of religion, science (and increasingly technology), esotericism, and the emergence of the human sciences in particular.<\/p>\n

In The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences<\/strong><\/em>(2017), Storm challenges the dominant account of modernity and its rupture from the pre-modern past. Based on archival research in five different countries, he traces the history of disenchantment narratives in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the “myth of mythless modernity” was forged while Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, many of the disciplines’ founders were enmeshed in these milieus; and they crafted notions of a disenchanted world in response to a burgeoning culture of spirits and magic.<\/p>\n

Alongside this historical scholarship, philosophy has been a persistent focus of Storm’s work. His graduate training focused on East Asian philosophy (Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism), continental philosophy (including Nietzsche and Foucault), and the history and philosophy of science. He subsequently deepened his engagement with Hegel, Weber, and Frankfurt School critical theory, and then returned to an earlier interest in analytic philosophy. His work brings these philosophical traditions into conversation with one another and with postcolonial theory to address problems in epistemology, social ontology, virtue ethics, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science and the social sciences.<\/p>\n

In Metamodernism: The Future of Theory<\/em><\/strong> (2021), Storm advances a methodological paradigm for the humanities and social sciences beyond the impasses of postmodernism. It develops a Process Social Ontology that reimagines social kinds as temporarily stabilized clusters of powers, alongside an expanded philosophy of language, grounded in animal communication studies, that reaches into non-human forms of signification. It reframes the relationship between knowledge and value toward a plural, constructive epistemology, opening space for a more inclusive and future-oriented scholarly practice. The book’s influence extends beyond the academy through Metamodern Theory & Praxis<\/a><\/strong>, a journal Storm co-founded to advance scholarship, activism, and art informed by metamodernist and allied approaches.<\/p>\n

Storm’s most recent book is The Genealogy of Genealogy: Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Coils of Critical History<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0(University of Chicago Press,\u00a0<\/em>April\u00a0<\/em>2026), \u00a0a critical examination of genealogy–a mode of historical analysis that shows that what looks timeless is in fact contingent, bound to shifting relations of meaning, knowledge, and power. Turning the method back on itself, the book traces its development through Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Foucault while uncovering entanglements with eugenics, race, and sovereignty. The book reconstructs genealogy’s rise as a dominant paradigm, challenges received views of Nietzsche’s philosophy of history, and revisits unresolved debates in Foucault studies. More than critique, The Genealogy of Genealogy<\/em> explores alternatives to genealogy and invites scholars to rethink its assumptions, limitations, and future.<\/p>\n

Work in Progress<\/strong>:<\/em><\/p>\n

Storm is currently working on “Transcendent Machines: Religion and the Philosophy of Technology<\/strong>” (under contract with Cambridge University Press) which brings religious studies into direct conversation with science and technology studies and the philosophy of technology. By exploring the function of organizing technics and artifacts and the emergence of the notion of technological society, it revises the analytical distinction between “religion” and “technology,” revealing their intrinsic entanglement.<\/p>\n

Storm is also writing “Glimmering Gods of the Electric Age<\/strong>,” \u00a0a monograph that takes as its point of departure the Japanese deification of Thomas Edison to explore how the cultural history of electricity contributed to the formation of “religion” and “science” as transnational categories. Working with archives from Japan, Europe, and the Americas, it situates theosophy and esoteric currents within the history of science and technology, and demonstrates how techno-animism was constitutive-not peripheral-to global constructions of “modernity.”<\/p>\n

Looking further ahead, Storm is developing a book-project tentatively titled “The Power of Powers<\/strong>,” which seeks to first provide a historical account of how concepts of power and causality became philosophically estranged; and second, advance a unified, conceptually robust new model of power-integrating power, causation, and social status-with implications for social ontology, political theory, and the philosophy of the human sciences.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\tResearch Areas<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExpand<\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\u00b7 Religion, Science, & Technology in<\/strong> East Asia <\/strong>(1600-present): Japanese Religions; History of Science and Technology in East Asia; Japanese and Chinese Philosophy; Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto.
\n\u00b7 Religion, Science, & Technology in Europe<\/strong> (1600-present): History of Science and Technology (including Social\/Human Sciences); History of Religion; Esotericism (including spiritualism, occultism, theosophy, and magic).
\n\u00b7 Philosophy & Critical T<\/strong>heory<\/strong>: History of Philosophy; Continental Philosophy (esp. Nietzsche, Foucault, Benjamin, Adorno); Philosophy of Science & Social Science; Science & Technology Studies; Philosophy of Religion; Sociological Theory (esp. Max Weber); Metaphysics (esp. Social Ontology); Critical Theory (Frankfurt School, postcolonial theory, critical race and gender theory).\n\t\t\t\t\tBooks<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExpand<\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t

Single-Authored Monographs<\/h3>\n
\n\"The
\n<\/a>\nThe Invention of Religion in Japan<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.
\nUniversity of Chicago Press, 2012.\nWinner:<\/strong> Society for the Scientific Study of Religion-Distinguished Book of the Year Award
\nFinalist:<\/strong> American Academy of Religion-Best First Book in the History of Religions\n
\n\"The
\n<\/a>\nThe Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.
\nUniversity of Chicago Press, 2017.\n

Link to Audiobook Version<\/a><\/strong> published by Tantor Media<\/p>\n
\n\"Metamodernism:
\n<\/a>\nMetamodernism: The Future of Theory<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.
\nUniversity of Chicago Press, 2021.\n

Winner:<\/strong> American Academy of Religion-Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion-Constructive-Reflective Studies.<\/p>\nTranslated into:
\nSpanish<\/a><\/strong>, Turkish<\/a><\/strong>, & Vietnamese<\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/em>\n
\n\"The
\n<\/a>\nThe Genealogy of Genealogy: Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Coils of Critical History<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.
\nUniversity of Chicago Press, 2026.\n

Coedited Monograph & Special Issues<\/h3>\n
\n\"Beyond
\n<\/a>\n“Beyond Disenchantment: Science, Technology, and New Religious Movements<\/a><\/strong>,”
\nNova Religio<\/em> (special issue), coedited with Grant Shoffstall, 2021.\n
\n\"Metamodernism
\n<\/a>\n“Metamodernism and the Study of Religion<\/a><\/strong>,”
\nReligious Studies Review<\/em> (special issue), coedited with Brian Collins, 2022.\n
\n\"Theosophy
\n<\/a>\nTheosophy and the Study of Religion<\/a><\/em><\/strong>,
\nmonograph, coedited with Charles Stang (Aries Book Series, Brill, 2024).\n\t\t\t\t\tAwards<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExpand<\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t