The Classical Ideas Podcast

Samira Mehta is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at CU Boulder. Her research focuses on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the US. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (UNC, 2018) was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her bo...

Sophie Bjork-James (Ph. D., Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements. She is the author of The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family (Rutgers 2021, winner of the Anne Bolin &...

Chauncey Handy is Assistant Professor of Religion at Reed College. As a Chicano scholar of the Hebrew Bible, Chauncey's work focuses on the intersection of race/racialization, theories of ethnicity, Latinx theorization of identity, and the reception history of the Hebrew Bible (for example his Bible, Race, and Empire course at Reed). He earned his Ph. D. from Princeton Theological Seminary and is...

Vic Thasiah is a professor of religion and a lead faculty member in the environmental studies program at California Lutheran University. He is also the founder and co-president of the nonprofit environmental organization Runners for Public Lands. His research focuses on Chinese nature poetry, Native American perspectives on land and running, and environmental philosophy and activism. He is current...

Sonja Thomas is an associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Colby College, where she teaches courses on South Asian feminisms, transnational feminisms, gender and human rights, feminist theory, and postcolonial and native feminisms. Sonja is associate editor for South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, and the author of Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender,...

Sarah Dees is a scholar of American and Indigenous religions and assistant professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on the history of the study and representation of Native North American religious traditions, including the relationship between the production of knowledge about religion and policies limiting the free exercise of religion. Her first book manuscr...

Tamisha A. Tyler (she/her/hers) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, and Theopoetics at Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana. Her research interests include Theopoetics, Theology and the arts, Afrofuturism, Black popular culture, and Science Fiction. Her dissertation, Articulating Sensibilities: Methodologies in Theopoetics in Conversation with Octavia E. Butler,...

Corwin Malcolm Davis is a PhD candidate at Emory University in Person, Community, and Religious Life, and earning a certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Corwin earned a B.A. Degree from Belmont University and a M.Div. from Vanderbilt University Divinity School as the Dean's Scholar. At Emory, Davis has received the George W. Woodruff Fellowship, the Centennial Scholars Fellowship...

This episode discusses the article "3HO's Boarding Schools Were a Living Hell" from Baaz News with the authors Stacie Stukin and Philip Deslippe. Read: https://www.baaznews.org/p/3hos-boarding-schools-abuse-yogi-bhajan?utm_medium=web Visit Stacie Stukin online:  https://www.staciestukin.com/ Visit Philip Deslippe online: https://philipdeslippe.com/ Read Stacie Stukin in Los Angeles Magazine: https...

Danielle is a poet, painter, teacher, and word-witch. The author of Bones & Honey, The Holy Wild Grimoire, The Sacred Hags Oracle, Seasons of Moon and Flame, Woman Most Wild, and The Holy Wild (published by New World Library), she teaches internationally and has facilitated circles, embodiment trainings, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. Ever grateful to her many teachers, Dani...

Rebecca Cooper teaches religion at the middle school level in the suburbs of Washington D.C.

Elyse Ambrose (Ph. D., Religion and Society, Drew University) is a blackqueer ethicist, creative, and educator. Their forthcoming book, A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive (T&T Clark) offers a transreligious and communal-based sexual ethics grounded in blackqueer archive. Ambrose's photo-sonic exhibition, "Spirit in the Dark Body: Black Queer Expressions of the...

Dr. Sana Patel , (Ph. D., Religious Studies, University of Ottawa) has distinguished herself as a scholar specializing in Digital Islam. She is the recipient of the 2023 Digital Religion Research Award presented by The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies. After completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship focused on systemic Islamophobia in Canada, Sana is keen on exploring how Isl...

Nancy A. Khalil is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an appointment in the Arab and Muslim American Studies Program. Her research broadly focuses on the politics of the idea of American Islam and her forthcoming manuscript is on the profession of the Imam in America. Her academic work has been supported by several foundation...

Patrick J. D'Silva (Ph. D., Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is a faculty member of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Denver. His current research projects include analyzing the intersection of race, religion, and cultural appropriation in contemporary science fiction, as well as the history of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have engaged with...

Charles McCrary (Ph. D., Religion, Florida State University) is an assistant professor of religious studies at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He researches and teaches broadly on American religion, especially topics related to politics, race, secularism, and science. His first book, Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers (University of Chicago Press, 2022), examines the...

Rev. Aizaiah G. Yong (Ph. D., Practical Theology, Claremont School of Theology) serves as Assistant Professor of Spirituality at the Claremont School of Theology in Southern California, USA. He is an ordained Pentecostal Christian minister within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a recognized facilitator in the Compassion Practice and an Internal Family Systems Practitioner. Growing up i...

In this gripping stand-alone literary thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel  Moon of the Crusted Snow , a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout. For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaab...

Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a Black queer preacher, teacher, public administrator, and justice advocate. She is an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and the Government Fellow for Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. In 2021, Rev. Naomi founded Salt | Yeast | Light, an organization that develops spaces of spiritual education, disrupti...

Maxwell Greenberg (he/they) | (Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Cultural Studies at Goucher College) is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator who researches and teaches about race, religion, gender, and place. He earned his PhD in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from UCLA (2021), before serving as the Friedman Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Washington...

Elizabeth Jemison is Associate Professor of Religion at Clemson University where she teaches courses on American religion. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South , published by UNC Press in 2020. Her next book project, tentatively titled, Christian Motherhood: Race and Southern Churchwomen's Organizing during Segregation , examin...

Matthew J. Smith (he/him/his) holds a Ph. D. in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Alma College in mid-central Michigan. He is a transdisciplinary scholar of race, religion, and U.S. empire whose research and teaching also center on gender/sexuality, science & technology, and the environmental humanities. His first book proje...

Lauren Horn Griffin (PhD, University of California Santa Barbara) is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. Her first book, Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England (Brill 2023), showed how confessional debates played a critical role in the development of national identities. Her current project investigates contemporary negotia...

Darius M. Benton, Ph. D. is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown, teaching courses in Organizational Communication and Religious Communication. He also serves as the inaugural program director for the MA in Strategic Communication degree. Dr. Benton earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Organizational Leadership from Regent University, his Maste...

Darnise C. Martin, PhD is a Professor, Author and Life Transformation Coach with 15 years of training and experiences in helping people create Whole Life Abundance. Dr. Darnise has a life- long passion for helping people tap into their spiritual connections for authentic transformation in the areas of Relationships, Spirituality, Life Purpose and Career, Self-Worth, and Well-Being. Dr. Darnise is...