The Classical Ideas Podcast

Sophea Seng is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at California State University, Long Beach, where she teaches courses on Cambodian diaspora, refugee studies, and transnational migration. A first‑generation Cambodian American scholar, she holds a PhD in Anthropology and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of California, Riverside, as well as...

From https://www.gwendolyngillson.com : I am Associate Professor of Asian Studies in the History, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion department at Illinois College. My research brings together anthropology of religion, religious studies, Japanese studies, and gender studies to trouble the "traditional" narratives of scholarship and society. My work focuses on otherness, however defined, w...

Dr. Matthew Keller is Public Scholar of Buddhism within the Curatorial Department at the Detroit Institute of Arts! He completed his Ph. D. at the University of Southern California in Asian Religions.  This episode supported by Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/ Matthew Keller at American Council of Learned Societies: https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/matthew-keller/  

Renée Ford, Ph. D. is a Lab Coordinator at the Contemplative Sciences Center, providing support for contemplative research at the CIRCL Lab . Renée's keen interest in understanding lived experiences in various contexts is a key motivation to her engagement here. She is trained in microphenomenology interviews, a type of interview that focuses on a short moment of experience and interested to apply...

Jonathan Feuer earned his Ph. D in Asian Languages and Cultures from UCLA in 2023. His current book project is entitled Buddhist Militarism, Violence, and Religious Freedom: The South Korean Buddhist Military Chaplaincy and his research interests include Buddhist modernity, South Korean history, and religion and violence. On this episode, we discuss Buddhist military chaplaincy in detail and previ...

MK Long is a historian and ethnographer of Buddhism and gender. Her current project highlights vernacular auto/biographical writings of Buddhist women in Myanmar, examining their rhetorical strategies of self-presentation and how they theorize Buddhist authority, temporality, and belonging. Long's study of vernacular literature of the 1980s-90s foregrounds its conditions of production, not only it...

Julian Butterfield is a scholar of medieval Chinese Buddhist literature with a special interest in how Mahāyāna Buddhist narratives depict and solicit feeling. His current monograph project recovers the aesthetic and affective dimensions of  Lotus Sūtra  devotion in fifth-to-eighth-century China, arguing that the transmission of this pivotal Buddhist scripture relied heavily on the cultivation of...

Sara Swenson works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College. Her current research explores how grassroots charity volunteers in Vietnam adapt Buddhist values and practices to navigate ethical struggles amid rapid urbanization and she is the author of "Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charities in Urban Vietnam" from Oxford University Press! Visit Sara Swenson onlin...

Nalika Gajaweera (Research Affiliate, Walter H. Capps Center, University of California, Santa Barbara; PhD, Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, 2013) is an anthropologist of Buddhism, race, and ethics, with a focus on community well-being and resilience. Her current book manuscript, Transforming the American Sangha, funded by the Kataly Foundation, is an ethnography of the Insight Medi...

Tara Isabella Burton (DPhil, University of Oxford; Visiting Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Visiting Research Fellow, Institutional Flourishing Lab, Catholic University of America) is a theologian and culture critic, and the author of  Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians  (Public Affairs, 2022) and  Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World ...

A moving study of how religion shapes Western climate discourse.   Our ecological system is disturbed, and with it, every other system we've built to inhabit it. We do not face inevitable destruction, yet many of us cannot conceive of climate change as anything but the end of the world, an apocalypse with all its biblical trappings. Why? In  A Perturbed System , anthropologist Susannah Crockford a...

Ira Helderman PhD, LPC (Adjunct Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Vanderbilt University; PhD, Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, 2016) studies how psychotherapists' definitions of what is and is not religious shape their understandings of caregiving, health, and illness. His first book, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (Unive...

Dr. Annie Selak (she/her/hers) is an expert in feminist ecclesiology. She studies wounds in the church, or moments where the church fails to live into its mission and causes harm. Racism, sexism, and the clergy sex abuse crisis are examples of the church failing to credibly be church. Guided by a feminist methodology, Selak integrates the lived experience of women with a robust vision for the chur...

Kaitlyn Ugoretz (Lecturer, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, Japan; PhD, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, in progress) is an anthropologist of religion focused on the globalization of Japanese Shinto practices through popular culture such as anime, video games, and Marie Kondo's decluttering. The Associate Editor of The...

Kira Ganga Kieffer is a scholar of American religions, history, culture, and politics with a PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University. She is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University. Kieffer's first book, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (Princeton University Press, May 19, 2026) examines the spiritual and religious r...

Liz Bucar  is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor. Her popular writing has appeared in  The Atlantic , the  Los Angeles Times ,  Teen Vogue , and  The Wall Street Journal , and she is the author of four books, including the award-winning  Stealing My Religion  and  Pious Fashion . She lives in Brook...

Ann Gleig (Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies, University of Central Florida; PhD, Rice University, 2010) studies spirituality emerging from the encounter between Buddhism and American culture, particularly meditation and mindfulness. The author of  American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity  (Yale University Press, 2019); and co-editor with Scott A. Mitchell of  The Oxford Handbook of Ame...

Natalie Avalos (Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder; PhD, University of California Santa Barbara, 2015) is an ethnographer of religion whose research examines contemporary Indigenous religious life, healing historical trauma, and decolonization. A Chicana of Mexican Indigenous descent, born and raised in the Bay Area, Dr. Avalos is currentl...

Michiel van Elk (1980) is a researcher and writer in the field of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience. Having received his PhD at the Donders Institute, the Netherlands, he has worked at several international institutions including the University of California Santa Barbara the École Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne in Switzerland and Stanford University. He is currently affiliated as associ...

Laine Walters Young is the Assistant Director of the Cal Turner Program for Moral Leadership in the Professions at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD from Vanderbilt in Religion, Psychology and Culture, and considers herself a feminist care ethicist working at the intersection of psychology and ethics. She has experience in non-profit administration as well as a Master of Theological Stud...

Dr. Lizardy-Hajbi is the author of  Unraveling Religious Leadership: Power, Authority, and Decoloniality  (Fortress Press, 2024) and co-editor of  Explore: Vocational Discovery in Ministry  (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). In addition, she is the author of a number of articles and reports, including  Latino Congregations: Trends from the Faith Communities Today (FACT) and Exploring the Pandemic Impac...

Judith L. Bishop is Associate Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Alice Andrews Quigley Chair in Women's Studies at Mills College at Northeastern University. She earned her BA from Baylor University, MA from Vanderbilt University, and her PhD from the Graduate Theological Union. Her research interests include: women in world religions; theoretical approaches to...

Amar D. Peterman is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC and the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America. Peterman holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. His writing and research...

Mac Loftin  is a lecturer on theology at Harvard Divinity School. This essay was adapted from his forthcoming book, " In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance " and was produced in partnership with The Narrative Project, an initiative of The Christian Century.  Read: How immigrants, student protesters and Muslims became the lepers of our time View: In the Twilig...

LJ Williams (they/she) is a queer African and Jewish ritualist and writer, pursuing an MDiv from Starr King School for The Ministry with a certificate in Entheogenic Justice Companioning. They are a longtime Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism community member, and served as a coordinator of a Chicago BLUUHaven. They were a Worship Learning Fellow at the Church of Larger Fellowship (2021-2023) a...