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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2026
Zoltan Pall, “Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Tr...
Zoltan Pall‘s Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a just published ethnographic investigation of the rise of Salafism among Lebanese Sunni Muslims is far more than a study of an ultra-conservative ...
51 min
2027
Michelle C. Wang, “Mandalas in the Making: The ...
Michelle C. Wang’s new book Mandalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang (Brill, 2018) joins a growing body of scholarship on esoteric Buddhism in China. Her work is an important contribution for the way in which she draw...
65 min
2028
Christopher G. White, “Other Worlds: Spirituali...
In the modern world, we often tend to view the scientific and the spiritual as diametrically opposed adversaries; we see them as fundamentally irreconcilable ways of understanding the world, whose epistemologies are so divergent that they espouse radic...
78 min
2029
Lavanya Vemsani, “Modern Hinduism in Text and C...
Dr. Lavanya Vemsani is Distinguished Professor of India History and Religions at Shawnee University and the editor of the new volume entitled Modern Hinduism in Text and Context (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
36 min
2030
Darcie Fontaine, “Decolonizing Christianity: Re...
What role did Christianity play in Algeria before, during, and after the war of independence? In Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Empire in France and Algeria (Cambridge University Press, 2016),
58 min
2031
Ramon Harvey, “The Qur’an and the Just Society”...
Ramon Harvey‘s new book The Qur’an and the Just Society (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) tackles a topic as big and meaningful as the title of the book suggests. What is justice? What words does the Qur’an use to explore the meaning of justice?
62 min
2032
Eric Miller, “The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom...
The recent Supreme Court Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling showed the on-going debate between religious conservatives and advocates of LGBTQ rights. Much of this debate has been about the definition of religious freedom and how to balance religious rights ag...
22 min
2033
Douglas L. Winiarski, “Darkness Falls on the La...
Douglas L. Winiarski is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond and winner of the 2018 Bancroft Prize in American history for his book Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth Century N...
61 min
2034
Joseph O. Baker and Buster G. Smith, “American ...
A rapidly growing number of Americans are embracing life outside the bounds of organized religion. Although the United States has long been viewed as a fervently religious Christian nation, survey data shows that more and more Americans are identifying...
55 min
2035
Elaine Fisher, “Hindu Pluralism: Religion and t...
Elaine Fisher’s Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South Asia (University of California Press, 2017) sheds light on the variegated, pluralistic texture of Hinduism in precolonial times. Drawing on Sanskrit, Telugu,
34 min
2036
Katharine Gerbner, “Christian Slavery: Conversi...
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In her recent book, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Pr...
45 min
2037
Sophia Rose Arjana, “Veiled Superheroes: Islam,...
Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture (Lexington Books, 2017) by Sophia Rose Arjana (with Kim Fox), takes us on a riveting journey through the world of superheroes and villains from the streets of New York to Pakistan.
42 min
2038
Stephen E. Strang, “God and Donald Trump” (Fron...
Those looking for deeper understanding of why the socially conservative, evangelical Christian community has been so loyal of Donald Trump will find answers in the book God and Donald Trump (Frontline, 2017).
50 min
2039
Holly Gayley, “Love Letters from Golok: A Tantr...
Often when people think of Tibetan Buddhism they have a limited vision of that social reality, perhaps one that imagines monks sitting in meditation or focused on the Dalai Lama. Rarely is the historical role of female Buddhist masters central to one’s...
53 min
2040
Faith and Politics with David Gergen, Rabbi Mel...
A Discussion with David Gergen, Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Eboo Patel, and John Dankosky
70 min
2041
Jennifer Graber, “The Gods of Indian Country: R...
The American West has always been home to many deities, argues Jennifer Graber in The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West (Oxford University Press, 2018). Graber, an associate professor of religious studies at the Un...
40 min
2042
Mira Beth Wasserman, “Jews, Gentiles, and Other...
In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals: The Talmud After the Humanities (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Talmud’s most scandalous tractate,
43 min
2043
Guillaume Rozenberg, “The Immortals: Faces of t...
“It is difficult to characterize this fascinating book,” George Tanabe writes in his short preface to The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), “Not just because it concerns thousand-year-old Burmese ...
41 min
2044
Michal Kravel-Tovi, “When the State Winks: The ...
In When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel (Columbia University Press, 2017), Michal Kravel Tovi, associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University, offers an intimate,
39 min
2045
Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, “Indian Muslim Minori...
In her fascinating and path paving new book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad (I. B. Tauris, 2017), Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont reorients our understa...
35 min
2046
David A. Hollinger, “Protestants Abroad: How Mi...
David A. Hollinger‘s Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World and Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2017) offers a history of how American missionaries, their children, and associates shaped U.S.
55 min
2047
Mira Balberg, “Blood for Thought: The Reinventi...
Mira Balberg‘s Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature (University of California Press, 2017) delves into a relatively unexplored area of rabbinic literature: the vast corpus of laws, regulations,
52 min
2048
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
2049
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
2050
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