New Books in Religion

Interviews with Scholars of Religion about their New Books

Religion & Spirituality
2001
Armando Salvatore, “Sociology of Islam: Knowled...
Armando Salvatore’s (Professor Global Religious Studies, McGill University) formidable new book Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power, Civility (Wiley, 2016) is a dense yet delightful meditation on the concept of sociology of Islam.
27 min
2002
Sarah Imhoff, “Masculinity and the Making of Am...
In her new book, Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), Professor Sarah Imhoff explores the relationship between American identity and American Jewish depictions and definitions of masculinity.
40 min
2003
Gregory Reichberg, “Thomas Aquinas on War and P...
When is war justified? What makes a just war? These are difficult questions to answer, but particularly so for Christians, followers of Jesus, who suffered violence without responding in kind. One philosopher-theologian who wrestled with these issues w...
75 min
2004
David Mitchell, “The Song of Ascents: Psalms 12...
Psalms 120-134, designated the “Songs of Ascents,” form their own distinct collection within the Psalter. Who wrote these psalms and for what occasion? David Mitchell, a biblical scholar, musicologist, and Hebraist, is here to answer these questions.
15 min
2005
Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. ...
During the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran kept a journal in which he recounted his experiences with, and observations of,
56 min
2006
Jon Mills, “Inventing God: Psychology of Belief...
There are many fronts in the argument against the existence of a god or gods and veracity of religious narratives. Some familiar approaches are to critique the philosophical underpinnings of religious ideology or to make a case from the perspective of ...
52 min
2007
Ashon T. Crawley, “Blackpentecostal Breath: The...
Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) is innovative and lyrical, challenging and beautiful. Ashon Crawley brings together black studies, queer theory, theology,
59 min
2008
Sarah Ruden, “The Face of Water: A Translator o...
On this program, we talk to Sarah Ruden about her new book, The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible (Pantheon, 2017). Novelist J. M. Coetzee praised the book, saying, “If you seriously want to know what the Bible says but don...
58 min
2009
Don Baker, “Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in C...
Shortly after the introduction of Catholicism into Korea in the late 18th century, Korea’s Confucian government began to persecute Catholics. Why would a Confucian government torture and kill the people it was supposed to protect and nurture?
57 min
2010
Jeanette Jouili, “Pious Practice and Secular Co...
Jeanette Jouili‘s fascinating new book Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe (Stanford University Press, 2015) navigates practices and challenges of living pious ethical lives in inhospitable conditions.
34 min
2011
Leonard Barkan, “Berlin for Jews: A Twenty-Firs...
In Berlin for Jews: A Twenty-First Century Companion (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Leonard Barkan, the class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton, examines the complex histories of Jewish life in Berlin.
38 min
2012
David Bryan and David Pao, eds, “Ascent into He...
The ascension of Christ is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity, and yet Luke’s two-volume work contains the only narrative depictions of Jesus’ ascent into heaven in the New Testament–all the more reason to take a closer look at these ascension narr...
44 min
2013
Maya Barzilai, “Golem: Modern Wars and Their Mo...
This episode of New Books in Jewish Studies features Maya Barzilai, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture at the University of Michigan and the author of Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters (New York University Press, 2016).
27 min
2014
Matthew J. Walton, “Buddhism, Politics and Poli...
Burmese Buddhist monks have featured in the news quite a lot in recent times, not as peaceful practitioners of self-abnegation, but at activists at the forefront of political movements characterized as comprising of a new kind of religious nationalism....
63 min
2015
William Kolbrener, “The Last Rabbi: Joseph Solo...
In The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition (Indiana University Press, 2016), William Kolbrener, professor of English at Bar Ilan University in Israel, explores the life and thought of Joseph Soloveitchik,
31 min
2016
S. Brent Plate ed., “Key Terms in Material Reli...
In recent years, several scholars of religion have moved away from the examination of discursive textual domains or the meaning of ritual practices towards analyzing the material worlds in which these practices and beliefs exists. S. Brent Plate,
49 min
2017
Rosemary Corbett, “Making Moderate Islam: Sufis...
Among the most powerful and equally insidious aspects of the new global politics of religion is the discourse of religious moderation that seeks to produce moderate religious subjects at ease with the aims and fantasies of liberal secular politics.
48 min
2018
Lewis Glinert, “The Story of Hebrew” (Princeton...
For this episode, New Books in Jewish Studies interviews Lewis Glinert, Professor of Hebrew Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Linguistics. His book, The Story of Hebrew (Princeton University Press, 2017),
33 min
2019
Rhiannon Graybill, “Are We Not Men? Unstable Ma...
Rhiannon Graybill‘s Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an innovative approach to gender and embodiment in the Hebrew Bible, revealing the male body as a source of persistent difficulty for...
33 min
2020
Alec Ryrie, “Protestants: The Faith that Made t...
500 years ago, a German monk and professor named Martin Luther started a well-intentioned movement to reform “the Church” (Jesus founded only one, after all). Luther’s object was not to split the Church, but to bring it into conformity with what he tho...
64 min
2021
Scott A. Mitchell, “Buddhism in America: Global...
Scott A. Mitchell‘s recent monograph, Buddhism in America: Global Religion, Local Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2016), provides a much-needed up-to-date overview of Buddhism in the United States. To tackle such a large topic,
58 min
2022
Brandon D. Crowe, “The Last Adam: A Theology of...
One scholar famously referred to the Gospels of the New Testament as passion narratives with long introductions. Such a view, however, tends to minimize the theological importance of Jesus’ life and ministry before his death. In today’s podcast, Dr.
33 min
2023
Yuval Harari, “Jewish Magic before the Rise of ...
Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah (Wayne State University Press, 2017) opens new vistas not only on the history of the practice of magic throughout Jewish history, but on the variety and syncretistic depth of such practices.
35 min
2024
Joseph Lumbard, “The Study Quran: A New Transla...
The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015) represents years of effort from a team of dedicated translators and editors (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Joseph Lumbard, Maria Dakake, Caner Dagli, and Mohammad Rustom).
54 min
2025
Sarah Hammerschlag, “Broken Tablets: Levinas, D...
In Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion (Columbia University Press, 2016), Sarah Hammerschlag, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School,
31 min