New Books in Religion
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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2076
Jared Compton, “Psalm 110 and the Logic of Hebr...
The use and function of the Old Testament in the book of Hebrews has been a neglected area of study. Jared Compton’s new book Psalm 110 and the Logic of Hebrews (T and T Clark, 2018) addresses this scholarly gap,
51 min
2077
Motti Inbari, “Jewish Radical Ultra-Orthodoxy C...
Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy, in its numerous manifestations, continues to exert profound influence on the Jewish world, even as it undergoes pressure to change from both within and without. In Jewish Radical Ultra-Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity, Zionism,
47 min
2078
Sadek Hamid, “Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The...
In Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Grounds of British Islamic Activism (I.B. Tauris, 2016), Sadek Hamid explores the contours of “Islamic activism”—and indeed the meaning of this key term—in the context of the UK.
66 min
2079
James Chappel, “Catholic Modern: The Challenge ...
In 1900 the Catholic Church stood staunchly against religious freedom and the secular state. By the 1960s, that position was reversed and Catholics began advocating for particularly Catholic forms of modernity. How did this happen?
52 min
2080
Cynthia Baker, “Jew” (Rutgers UP, 2017)
What is the significance of Jew? How has this word come to have such varied and charged meanings? Who has (and has not) used it, and why? Cynthia Baker explores these questions and more in her new book Jew,
67 min
2081
Brandi Denison, “Ute Land Religion in the Ameri...
Land is central in the construction of identity for many communities. For Ute Native Americans the meaning of a twelve million acre homeland in western Colorado is intricately linked to the various ways they understand their heritage and future.
60 min
2082
Amy Langenberg, “Birth in Buddhism: The Sufferi...
Birth and suffering are deeply linked concepts in Buddhism, and their connection has shaped how the bodies and status of women were understood. Join us for a conversation with Amy Paris Langenberg about her book Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Fetus a...
57 min
2083
David Biale, “Hasidism: A New History” (Princet...
Who, or what, are Hasidim? A movement that was once mysterious and inaccessible has recently risen to the forefront of popular consciousness. Whether it be in last years acclaimed film Menashe, the Netflix documentary One of Us,
72 min
2084
Mark Edward Ruff, “The Battle for the Catholic ...
Historical debates about the actions of the Roman Catholic Church in relationship to the Third Reich have never been restricted to academic presses and journals like so many other topics. Rather several groups of partisans in both Germany and the Unite...
63 min
2085
Michael Shermer, “Heavens on Earth: The Scienti...
For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, and though no one has ever returned from such a place to report what it is really like—or that it even exists—today science and technology are being used to tr...
53 min
2086
Marie Griffith, “Moral Combat: How Sex Divided ...
Marie Griffith‘s new book Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics (Basic Books, 2017) offers a portrait of how religious views regarding sexuality became entangled with multiple political debates including thos...
55 min
2087
Bryan R. Dyer, “Suffering in the Face of Death:...
Suffering and death are two topics that are frequently referred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but have rarely been examined within scholarship on this New Testament book. Join us as we talk with Bryan Dyer about his own study of these themes,
23 min
2088
Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplex...
Alfred Ivry‘s book, Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplexed’: A Philosophical Guide (University of Chicago, 2016) is the only modern commentary in English to explicate Maimonides’ summa The Guide of the Perplexed in its entirety. In so doing,
63 min
2089
Michael Ruse, “On Purpose” (Princeton UP, 2017)
Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Immanuel Kant thought we were stuck with purpose, and while Darwin’s theory of natural selection profoundly shook the idea, it was unable to kill it. In fact,
55 min
2090
Leon Wiener Dow, “The Going: A Meditation on Je...
Leon Wiener Dow’s most recent work The Going: A Meditation on Jewish Law (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) offers readers intimate, informative, and at times provocative reflections on halakha, or Jewish law. The author makes nuanced philosophical and theolog...
49 min
2091
Anna Andreeva, “Assembling Shinto: Buddhist App...
In her recent monograph, Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2017), Anna Andreeva focuses on a complex network of religious sites, figures,
39 min
2092
Kathryn Troy, “The Specter of the Indian: Race,...
In a meticulously researched study The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender and Ghosts in American Seances, 1848-1890 (SUNY Press, 2017), Kathryn Troy investigates the many examples of Indian ghosts appearing to Spiritualists in the latter half of the n...
48 min
2093
Alexander Knysh, “Sufism: A New History” (Princ...
Sufism, like many terms in the study of Islam, can be difficult to define and even more difficult to handle, but Alexander Knysh, in Sufism: A New History (Princeton University Press, 2017), has produced a primer that will both challenge and reinforce ...
54 min
2094
Mark Sedgwick, “Western Sufism: From the Abbasi...
In his work, Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mark Sedgwick maps the ideational processes that have led to the development of contemporary western Sufism. Sedgwick showcases how Neoplatonism influenced A...
38 min
2095
Joel Blecher, “Said the Prophet of God: Hadith ...
In his marvelous new book Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across a Millennium (University of California Press, 2017), Joel Blecher, Assistant Professor of History at George Washington University,
40 min
2096
Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp, “Muslim Women in French ...
Connections between France and North Africa have long been shaped by colonialism, nationalism, and economics. This intercultural relationship has also been mediated through the arts. In Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in Fran...
51 min
2097
Ella Shohat, “On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and O...
Spanning several decades, the work of Ella Shohat, a Professor of Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University, has introduced conceptual frameworks that fundamentally challenged conventional understandings of Israel, Palestine,
48 min
2098
Tam T. T. Ngo, “The New Way: Protestantism and ...
Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church among linguistic and cultural minorities in Myanmar, or any one of the thousands of Christian communi...
44 min
2099
Mark Rozell and Clyde Wilcox, “God at the Grass...
In the wake of the Alabama Senate election in December, 2017, attention has been drawn to the intersection of religion and politics. This is the subject of God at the Grassroots 2016: The Christian Right in American Politics (Rowman and Littlefield,
18 min
2100
Crawford Gribben, “John Owen and English Purita...
Though the preeminent English theologian of the 17th century, there is much about John Owen’s life which remains obscured to us today. One of the achievements of Crawford Gribben‘s new book John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (Oxfor...
4 min