Episodes
Tune in for our new Discourse! episode with Carmen Becker, Susannah Crockford, and Savannah Finver as they discuss legal issues of rights, abortion, protests, and more!
Published 05/30/22
Tune in for Part I of our RSP Remix episodes on Cults and New Religious Movements!
Published 05/20/22
What is curanderismo and where is it practiced? How does it connect to the borderlands? Is it a "folk" religion, and what exactly does that mean? Tune in with Andie Alexander, Israel L. Domínguez, Brett Hendrickson, and Jennifer Koshatka Seman for the RSP's first episode on curanderismo!
Published 05/02/22
In this month’s discourse, Sidney Castillo is joined by Chris Cotter and Sierra Lawson to discuss the contemporary localized manifestations of Easter and Passover celebrations, a current US Supreme Court Case relating to the First Amendment, and the entanglement of Catholicism and national identity in television’s “Derry Girls”.
Published 04/25/22
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm and Dan Gorman discuss Storm's thoughts about the future of critical theory from his recent book Metamodernism.
Published 04/18/22
What happens when we reframing spiritual practices as an "experiment with power"? This week, J. Brent Crosson joins Ray Kim to discuss how we can challenge conventional understandings of religion and law in modern nation-states. Be sure to tune in!
Published 04/11/22
RSP co-founder Chris Cotter and Paul Hedges discuss the construction of introductory textbooks in the contemporary world, including issues of positionality, criticality, and decolonization.
Published 04/04/22
Tune in for this month's Discourse! with Andie Alexander, Daniel Gorman, Jr., and Paul-François Tremlett as they discuss the upcoming elections in the Philippines and the Russian Orthodox church response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Published 03/28/22
In this episode, Dr. Méadhbh McIvor joins Savannah Finver to discuss her recent book Representing God: Christian Legal Activism in Contemporary England. Dr. McIvor provides our listeners with the background for her project; the method of ethnography, as well as its challenges and implications for the study of religion; and how the belief in a certain kind of afterlife impacts the kinds of legal and political activism that her interlocutors are willing to engage in.
Published 03/14/22
In this episode, Dr. Méadhbh McIvor joins Savannah Finver to discuss her recent book Representing God: Christian Legal Activism in Contemporary England. Dr. McIvor provides our listeners with the background for her project; the method of ethnography, as well as its challenges and implications for the study of religion; and how the belief in a certain kind of afterlife impacts the kinds of legal and political activism that her interlocutors are willing to engage in.
Published 03/14/22
You've heard of the CIA, but did you know that they're just as interested in religion as we are? Join Dr. Michael Graziano and Jacob Noblett as they discuss the impact of the OSS and CIA's religion-oriented intelligence operations across the globe!
Published 03/07/22
This month's episode of Discourse! features Candace Mixon, Craig Martin, and Suzanne Owen discussing issues of religious freedom and rhetoric—you won't want to miss it!
Published 02/28/22
Visit our archives to explore the insider/outsider problem in the study of religion. We explore questions such as "What is an 'insider' or 'outsider'?" and "How do scholars of religion study and engage 'insiders'?" to begin unpacking what all is at stake in this process of group formation.
Published 02/21/22
Join host Theo Wildcroft and panelists Wendy Dossett, Dawn Llewellyn, Suzanne Newcombe, and Lisa Oakley as they discuss scholarship and academic approaches to issues of 'spiritual abuse'.
Published 02/14/22
What sort of discursive traps to we fall into when talking about 'Islam' or 'the West'? How might we reframe our discussions with a critical humanist approach? In this episode, Khurram Hussain joins Andie Alexander to discuss his recent book, The Muslim Speaks (Zed Books, 2020) explore the benefits of critically engaging these issues in a way that takes seriously the human-focused study of religion.
Published 02/07/22
The first Discourse! of 2022 is hosted by Michael Munnik (Cardiff), who is joined by guests Beth Singler (Cambridge) and Richard Newton (Alabama) to discuss how the media is talking about "religion" this month.
Published 01/31/22
How can we approach the study of ayahuasca critically? In this RSP episode, join and hear Sidney Castillo talk with Bernd Brabec de Mori and Olivia Marcus on their research about indigenous and mestizo use of ayahuasca in the Peruvian rainforest.
Published 01/24/22
For our last interview of 2021 (not to worry, the Mid-Year special is coming!), our co-founder David G. Robertson is back in the interview seat discussing his new book Gnosticism and the History of Religions with our co-editor Andie Alexander. Tune in to learn more about the 'strange charm of gnosticism'!
Published 12/13/21
Dr. Breann Fallon sits down with Professor Daniel Boyarin to discuss the difficulty of defining Judaism and Boyarin's new book Judaism: Genealogy of a Modern Notion
Published 12/06/21
In this Aussie episode of November Discourse, Professor Carole Cusack and Ray Radford sit down with Dr. Breann Fallon to discuss religion as in Australian current affairs.
Published 11/29/21
This RSP Remix answers the question "What is the world religions paradigm?" with an abridged version of our 2013 interview with James Cox.
Published 11/22/21
In this episode, Matt Sheedy joins RSP co-editor Andie Alexander to discuss his recent book Owning the Secular: Religious Symbols, Culture Wars, Western Fragility and unpack common assumptions about secularism and religion in the public sphere.
Published 11/15/21
What happens when Christianities meet each other? Find out in this week's episode of the RSP, where Sidney Castillo talks with István Perczel on his research of the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala, and their encounters with Catholic missionaries and Western colonial powers in the early modern period.
Published 11/08/21
In this episode, Dr. Craig Martin joins Savannah Finver to discuss his forthcoming book, Discourse and Ideology: A Critique of the Study of Culture. Dr. Martin shares with us his motivations for writing this book, describes his primary methodologies and the key concepts he introduces in the text, and explains some of his thoughts on the utility of religion as a category of analysis in religious studies scholarship.
Published 11/01/21
Join Emily D. Crews, Alison Robertson, and host Theo Wildcroft for a collection of topical stories on how religion mediates how the state treats human bodies in different ways. And Jesusween!
Published 10/25/21