New Books in Religion
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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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000...
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The Philosophy of Hope: On Immanence and Transcendence with R.J. Snell
In this third episode of Season 5, I interview Dr. R.J. Snell, a visiting instructor at Princeton University, the director of academic programs at the...
Gijs Kruijtzer, "Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700" (de Gruyter, 2023)
How do people justify what others see as transgression? Taking that question to the Persian-Muslim and Latin-Christian worlds over the period 1200 to...
Ken Chitwood, "Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism Among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam" (U Texas Press, 2025)
Ken Chitwood's Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam (University of Texas Press, 2025), uses rich ethnographi...
Katharine Gerbner, "Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica" (Duke UP, 2025)
In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British colonial...
The Vilna Gaon and the Making of Modern Judaism
The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Genius...
Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha mal...
Gods and the State: Environmental Change in the Blang Mountains, China
What happens to the environment when the state enters previously self-governed villages in rural China? We explore this question in the Blang mountain...
Ewa Debicka-Borek and Ofer Peres, "Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India" (HASP, 2025)
Hindu sacred geographies are shaped by interwoven webs of myth, ritual, and pilgrimage. Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India...
Daniel McClellan, "The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues" (St. Martin's Essentials, 2025)
The Bible is arguably the world’s most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, a...
John Oakes, "The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without" (Avid Reader, 2024)
With fasting at an all-time high in popularity, here is an enlightening exploration into the history, science, and philosophy behind the practice—esse...
Manuela Ceballos, "Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean" (U California Press, 2025)
Manuela Ceballos’ new book Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean (University of California Pr...
Jon Stobart, "Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the English Clergy" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
An innovative approach in the field of material culture and consumption studies, Life in the Georgian Parsonage: Morals, Material Goods and the Englis...
Elliot B. Hanowski, "Towards a Godless Dominion: Unbelief in Interwar Canada" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023)
In recent surveys, one in four Canadians say they have no religion. A century ago, Canada was widely considered to be a Christian nation, and the vast...
Tibetan Medicine for Meditators, with Tawni Tidwell
Today I sit down with Dr. Tawni Tidwell, a biocultural anthropologist and Tibetan medicine doctor at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of...
Rian Thum, "Islamic China: An Asian History" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Can someone be Chinese and Muslim? For some academics, this has been a surprisingly fraught question, with some asserting that Chinese Muslims are not...
Hillary Rodrigues, "The Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess" (SUNY Press, 2025)
The Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess (SUNY Press, 2025) provides the first comprehensive examination of the Hindu...
Moulie Vidas, "The Rise of Talmud" (Princeton UP, 2025)
The rabbinic sages of antiquity are known for their sophisticated and creative reading of Scripture. But beginning in the third century CE, these sage...
Syona Puliady, et al., "Visualizing Devotion: Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings" (U Washington Press, 2025)
Textiles, embroidered with religious imagery, express lay piety in public and private shrinesThis beautifully illustrated volume highlights Jain devot...
Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, "Lincoln and the Jews: A History" (NYU Press, 2025)
In this expanded edition to a groundbreaking work, now in paperback, Lincoln and the Jews: A History (NYU Press, 2025), Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin...
Zev Eleff et al. eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Jewish law, known as halakhah, is a unique legal system that has developed over a period of nearly two millennia, across multiple continents, and in i...
Zalman Newfield, "Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey Out of Hasidism" (Temple UP, 2026)
Growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn as a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community, Zalman Newfield was raised in an atmosphe...
Todd H. Weir and Lieke Wijnia, eds., "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
The open access Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe (Bloomsbury, 2025) offers readers a state-of-the-art guide to the...
David S. Powers and Eric Tagliacozzo, "Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies" (Cornell UP, 2023)
The essays in Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies (Cornell UP, 2023) address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-...
Neilesh Bose, "Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the development and natu...
David Frankfurter ed., "Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic" (Brill, 2019)
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide t...
Elaine M. Fisher, "The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India (Oxford UP, 2025), Elaine Fisher reconstructs Vīraśaiva origins from unstudied m...
Zaid Adhami, "Dilemmas of Authenticity: The American Muslim Crisis of Faith" (UNC Press, 2025)
In one of the most important books published in 2025—Dilemmas of Authenticity: The American Muslim Crisis of Faith, published by UNC Press—Zaid Adhami...
Charles Alistair McCrary, "Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
"Sincerely held religious belief" is now a common phrase in discussions of American religious freedom, from opinions handed down by the US Supreme Cou...
Ashlyn Hand, "Prioritizing Faith: International Religious Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy" (NYU Press, 2025)
The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 formally established the promotion of religious freedom as a U.S. foreign policy and national security...
A. Bagliani and N, Şenocak, "A People's Church: Medieval Italy and Christianity, 1050-1300" (Cornell UP, 2023)
A People's Church brings together a distinguished international group of historians to provide a sweeping introduction to Christian religious life and...
Black Beryl: The Modern Remaking of Kundalini, with Marleen Thaler
Today host Pierce Salguero sits down with Marleen Thaler, a researcher at the University of Vienna and University of Graz. Together, we investigate th...
Wisdom of the Goddess: The Divine Feminine in South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan Art
Hillary Langberg discusses Wisdom of the Goddess, an online exhibition she curated for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art featuring nine g...
Kevin Hart, "Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
In Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation (U Chicago Press, 2023), Kevin Hart develops a new hermeneutics of contemplation through a medita...
J. L. Schellenberg, "What God Would Have Known: How Human Intellectual and Moral Development Undermines Christian Doctrine" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In this book, What God Would Have Known: How Human Intellectual and Moral Development Undermines Christian Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 2024), P...
Vanessa R. Sasson, "The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women" (Equinox, 2023)
Vanessa R. Sasson's book The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women (Equinox, 2023) is a retelling of the story of the first Buddhist women's...
Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Coined in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term "voodoo" has been deployed largely by people in the U.S. to refer to spiritual practices--rea...
David Albertson, "The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure Without Measure" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The writings of ancient and medieval Christian mystics were rediscovered in the twentieth century, and today they are read more widely than ever befor...
Natasha Heller, "Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan" (U Hawai'i Press, 2025)
In Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan (U Hawai'i Press, 2025), Natasha Heller makes two key interventions:...
Adam Bursi, "Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Adam Bursi’s Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam (Edinburg University Press, 2024) uses writings by early Muslims to map a...
Daniel Eastman An, "Fear of God: Practicing Emotion in Late Antique Monasticism" (U California Press, 2025)
In the writings of ancient Christians, the near-ubiquitous references to the "fear of God" have traditionally been seen as a generic placeholder for p...