What makes a Buddhist monk? This is the motivating question for Thomas Borchert, Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont, as he explores the social and educational formation of Buddhists from Southwest China. Borchert introduces his

Hüseyin Yılmaz, “Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought” (Princeton UP, 2018)

Dec 7th, 2018 1h 29m

In Islamic intellectual history, it is generally assumed that the Ottomans did not contribute much to Islamic thought. With his new book, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2018), Hü

Kelly G. Wilson, “Mindfulness for Two: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Approach to Mindfulness in Psychotherapy” (Guilford Press, 2016)

Dec 6th, 2018 1h 1m

In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill talks with Dr. Kelly Wilson about kindness and the common humanity of feeling inadequate and broken. Dr. Wilson describes the evolutionary science

Alireza Doostdar, “The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny” (Princeton UP, 2018)

Dec 5th, 2018 59m 6s

Winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s 2018 Albert Hourani Book Award, Alireza Doostdar’s The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton University Press, 2018) is a mesmerizing study of discourse

Jessica Marie Falcone, “Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built” (Cornell UP, 2018)

Dec 4th, 2018 59m 46s

What can we learn from the anthropological study of projects that are never realized, or of dreams that are never fulfilled? In her new book, Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built (Cornell Universi

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, “The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Nov 29th, 2018 56m 12s

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar’s The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is an incisive study of continuity as well as change in Pakistan that has moved the country towards religious conserva

Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life” (Viking, 2018)

Nov 29th, 2018 45m 16s

Despite ranking among the most influential people in English history, Thomas Cromwell has long eluded biographers and historians. In Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life (Viking, 2018), though, Diarmaid MacCulloch provides readers with the def

Sumantra Bose, “Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Nov 28th, 2018 55m 15s

Sumantra Bose‘s new book Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a fascinating comparison of the rise of religious parties in the non-Western world’s two major attempt

Danna Agmon, “A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conversion, and Scandal in French India” (Cornell UP, 2017)

Nov 28th, 2018 54m 35s

People sometimes forget—if they are even aware—that France’s empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included a colonial presence in South Asia, a presence that at one time rivaled that of the British. Danna Agmon’s A Colonial Affair

Tracy Fessenden, “Religion Around Billie Holiday” (Penn State UP, 2018)

Nov 14th, 2018 57m 54s

Billie Holiday is one of the most iconic jazz performers of all time. Her voice is certainly unmistakable but for many her religious sensibilities may be invisible. In Religion Around Billie Holiday (Penn State University Press, 2018), Tracy Fe

David P. Barash, “Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are” (Oxford UP, 2018)

Nov 13th, 2018 1h 19m

Human beings have long seen themselves as the center of the universe, as specially-created creatures who are anointed as above and beyond the natural world. Professor and noted scientist David P. Barash calls this viewpoint a persistent paradig

Michael Brenner, “A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society” (Indiana UP, 2018)

Nov 12th, 2018 31m 54s

In A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society (Indiana University Press, 2018), edited by Michael Brenner, Professor of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich and Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair i

Shenila Khoja-Moolji, “Forging an Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia” (U California Press, 2018)

Nov 12th, 2018 39m 40s

Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s Forging an Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia (University of California Press, 2018) is a pathbreaking and incredibly timely monograph that combines tools of education studies,

Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh, “Pentecostals in America” (Columbia UP, 2018)

Nov 8th, 2018 1h

Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh‘s Pentecostals in America (Columbia University Press, 2018) offers a critical look at the history, key figures, and ideas that make Pentecostalism unique and challenges the narrative gloss offered by its adherents and ch

Lilian Calles Barger, “The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology” (Oxford UP, 2018)

Nov 7th, 2018 54m 41s

A searching and richly textured history of the affinities and common origins of Latin American and North American liberation theologies, The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press 2018) dives

Paul Djupe and Ryan L. Claassen, eds., “The Evangelical Crackup?: The Future of the Evangelical-Republican Coalition” (Temple UP, 2018)

Nov 6th, 2018 21m 32s

In 2016, despite only mixed support from evangelical leaders, Donald Trump won an enormous share of the white evangelical vote. How did Trump manage to overcome the seeming mix-match between his record on social and moral issues and the longsta

Zoe Knox, “Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Secular World: From the 1870s to the Present” (Palgrave, 2018)

Nov 5th, 2018 10m 43s

Jehovah’s Witnesses are one of the most successful “new religious movements” to have emerged from the prophetic ferment within later nineteenth-century Protestantism. Always controversial, often persecuted, and well-known for their proselytisin

Daniel Stolz, “The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

Nov 5th, 2018 55m 26s

Both a history of science and a history of Islam, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Daniel Stolz tells the story of Ottoman Egypt and astronomy, looking at

Philip Lutgendorf, “The Epic of Ram” (Harvard University Press, 2016-)

Nov 2nd, 2018 1h 2m

Dr. Philip Lutgendorf is Retired Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies at the University of Iowa. He is currently working on a seven-volume translation of the Hindi devotional text, the Rāmcaritmānas written by the sixteenth-century Nort

Donald H. Akenson, “Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American Evangelicalism” (Oxford UP/McGill-Queen’s UP, 2018)

Nov 1st, 2018 33m 56s

Don Akenson, who is Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen’s University, Ontario, is one of the most eminent scholars of Irish history. Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American E

Anand Taneja, “Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi”

Oct 31st, 2018 53m 58s

Anand Taneja’s Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi (Stanford University Press, 2017) is a landmark publication that interrogates modes of religious practice and imaginaries of time that disrupt dominan

M. L. Rozenblit and J. Karp, “World War I and the Jews: Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East, and America” (Berghahn, 2017)

Oct 30th, 2018 50m 43s

How was Jewish life affected by the First World War? How did Jews around the world understand, engage with, and influence the Great War and surrounding events? And why has the impact of World War I so often overlooked Jewish historical narrativ

Iain Provan, “The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture” (Baylor UP, 2017)

Oct 29th, 2018 35m 26s

Exactly five centuries after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Christians continue to debate the best approach to the reading of their sacred book. The Reformation and the Right Reading of Script

Naomi Seidman, “The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell In Love With Love, And With Literature” (Stanford UP, 2016)

Oct 29th, 2018 38m 42s

In The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell In Love With Love, And With Literature (Stanford University Press, 2016), Naomi Seidman, Chancellor Jackman Professor in the Arts at the University of Toronto, considers the evolution of Jewish love and m

Shannon Fogg, “Stealing Home: Looting, Restitution, and Reconstructing Jewish Lives in France, 1942-1947” (Oxford UP, 2017)

Oct 25th, 2018 57m 49s

While the history of the Second World War and Jewish persecution in France has been widely studied, the return of survivors in the aftermath of deportation and genocide has not received sufficient attention. With Stealing Home: Looting, Restitu