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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2426
Clark Chilson, “Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Bu...
Clark Chilson‘s new book, Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment (University of Hawai’i Press, 2014) examines secret groups of Shin (i.e., True Pure Land Buddhist) practitioners from the thirteenth century onw...
65 min
2427
Edward E. Andrews, “Native Apostles: Black and ...
Often when we think of missions to Native Americans or people of African descent, we think of white missionaries. In his book Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World (Harvard University Press, 2013), Dr. Edward E.
70 min
2428
Michael Cook, “Ancient Religions, Modern Politi...
Michael Cook, a widely-respected historian and scholar of Islam begins his book with a question that everyone seems to be asking these days: is Islam uniquely violent or uniquely political? Why does Islam seem to play a larger role in contemporary poli...
42 min
2429
Amy Evrard, “The Moroccan Women’s Rights Moveme...
Amy Evrard‘s first book, The Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement (Syracuse University Press, 2014), examines women’s attempts to change their patriarchal society via their movement for equality and rights. At the center of Evrard’s book is the 2004 reform...
63 min
2430
Jonathan A. C. Brown, “Misquoting Muhammad” (On...
Many people have described Muslims modernities as being fundamentally disrupted by individual and civilizational encounters with western society. Wether rejecting or accepting alternative modes of thinking Muslims have responded to these new challenges...
58 min
2431
Paul Copp, “The Body Incantatory: Spells and th...
Paul Copp‘s new book, The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on Chinese interpretations and uses of two written dharani during the last few centuries of the first ...
57 min
2432
Amanullah De Sondy, “The Crisis of Islamic Masc...
What gets to count as Islam? In the current political climate this question is being repeated in a variety of contexts. The tapestry of various Islamic identities is revealed in an investigation of gender. In The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities (Blooms...
58 min
2433
Sarah Bowen Savant, “The New Muslims of Post-Co...
Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work ...
56 min
2434
Chun-fang Yu, “Passing the Light: The Incense L...
Chan-fang Yu‘s new book, Passing the Light: The Incense Light Community and Buddhist Nuns in Contemporary Taiwan (University of Hawaii Press, 2013), focuses on a community of nuns in Taiwan founded in the early 1980s,
59 min
2435
Anthony Santaro, “Exile & Embrace: Contemporary...
The death penalty is a subject that can easily inflame emotions. However, in his book, Exile & Embrace: Contemporary Religious Discourses on the Death Penalty (Northeastern University Press, 2013), Dr. Anthony Santoro does an amazing job of objectively...
66 min
2436
Donald Holbrook, “The Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Fr...
Donald Holbrook‘sThe Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse (Bloomsbury, 2014)represents a significant scholarly contribution to the study of Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism more broadly.
55 min
2437
Mariam al-Attar, “Islamic Ethics: Divine Comman...
Mariam al-Attar, Islamic Ethics: Divine Command Theory in Arabo-Islamic Thought (Routledge, 2010) explores the meaning, origin and development of “Divine Command Theory” in Islamic thought. In the process,
47 min
2438
Iqbal Sevea, “The Political Philosophy of Muham...
The towering Indian Muslim poet and intellectual Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) is among the most contested figures in the intellectual and political history of modern Islam. Heralded by some as the father of Pakistan and by others as a champion of pan-Islam...
54 min
2439
Mary-Jane Rubenstein, "Worlds Without End: The ...
An interview with Mary-Jane Rubenstein
59 min
2440
Nabil Matar, “Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings o...
In Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism (Columbia University Press, 2014), Nabil Matar masterfully edits an important piece of scholarship from seventeenth-century England by scholar and physician,
54 min
2441
Rebecca Rossen, “Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identit...
How does an author craft a work that speaks across the boundaries of dance studies, Jewish studies and gender studies? What does it mean for dance to function as a site for probing complex questions of racial, ethnic and cultural identity?
44 min
2442
Albert Park and David Yoo, eds., “Encountering ...
Modernity and religion have often been seen as fundamentally at odds. However, the articles in Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America (University of Hawaii Press, 2014 ), edited by Albert L. Park and David K. Yoo,
78 min
2443
Jolyon Thomas, “Drawing on Tradition: Manga, An...
The worlds of cinema and illustrated fiction are replete with exciting data for the historian of religion. Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University Of Hawai’i Press, 2012), by author Jolyon Thomas,
65 min
2444
William Chittick, “Divine Love: Islamic Literat...
Where does love come from and where will it lead us? Throughout the years various answers have been given to these questions. In Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (Yale University Press, 2013), William Chittick,
60 min
2445
Samuel Scheffler, “Death and the Afterlife” (Ox...
Our moral lives are constructed out of projects, goals, aims, and relationships or various kinds. The pursuit of these projects, and the nurturing of certain relationships, play central role in giving our lives their meaning and value.
59 min
2446
Ovamir Anjum, “Politics, Law, and Community in ...
In Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Ovamir Anjum explores a timely topic, even though his focus is hundreds of years in the past. In order to present his topic Professor Anjum ask...
66 min
2447
Matthew Hedstrom, “The Rise of Liberal Religion...
Expressions of religious belief through popular media are a regular occurrence in our contemporary age. But the circulation and negotiation of religious identities in public contexts has a fairly long history in American culture. Matthew Hedstrom,
56 min
2448
Shabana Mir, “Muslim American Women on Campus: ...
In the post 9/11 era in which Muslims in America have increasingly felt under the surveillance of the state, media, and the larger society, how have female Muslim students on US college campuses imagined, performed,
51 min
2449
John P. Turner, “Inquisition in Early Islam” (I...
Scholars of Islam and historians have frequently pointed to the Miḥna, translated as ‘trial’ or ‘test,’ as a crossroad in the landscape of Islamic history. Professor John P. Turner of Colby College is among those who challenge the long held assumptio...
75 min
2450
Kevin Schilbrack, “Philosophy and the Study of ...
Very often evaluative questions about cultural phenomena are avoided for more descriptive or explanatory goals when approaching religions. Traditionally, this set of concerns has been left to philosophers of religion.
59 min