Peter Jackson Rova

My research is focused on the philological study of Indo-European religions, with a special emphasis on ancient Indian and Iranian religions, the religions of ancient Greece and Rome, and Old Norse religion. I have also undertaken the daunting comparative task of exploring how recurrences in the earliest cultic and heroic poetry of ancient India, Iran, Greece, and the Germanic world may provide clues to the common past of these traditions. I believe that there is sufficient cultural data embedded in the hereditary Indo-European poetic vocabulary to invite serious anthropological and historical consideration, thus opening a window to a critical phase in Eurasian prehistory.

Against the background of my scholarly expertise, I regularly touch upon general theoretical and conceptual concerns in the study of religion, such as divination, eschatology, the rhetorical dimensions of myth and ritual, orality and literacy, philosophy and ritual speculation, and the function of ritual economies in ancient religions.

My broad interests in cultural history and the history of ideas have occasionally led me to deviate from my academic habitus, motivating research in the most various of areas, including Palaeolithic figurines, the correspondence of the brothers Grimm, the Great Seal of the United States, and black masses in 19th century Paris. I am currently cooperating with professor Norbert Oettinger from the University of Erlangen, Germany, in preparing a general survey of common linguistic traits in Indo-European religious traditions. I am also writing a book about the practical and theoretical impact of suspending mental actions, especially actions of judgement and disbelief, along a distinguishable historical trajectory.

I am a member of the research colleague of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, a corresponding member of the Nathan Söderblom Society, and a working member of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy.