Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church among linguistic and cultural minorities in Myanmar, or any one of the thousands of Christian communities scattered throughout Indonesia. Tam T. T. Ngo‘s new book is about none of these relatively familiar gro ... Show More
Feb 9
Lucy Donkin, "Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Dr. Lucy Donkin’s Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2022) illuminates how the floor surface shaped the ways in which people in Medieval Western Europe and beyond experienced sacred spaces. The ground beneath our feet plays a crucial, yet often ... Show More
1h 8m
Feb 5
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 meditation on Christian thought and secular philosophy. Drawing on Kant, Schopenhauer, Coleridge, and Husserl, Hart first charts the eme ... Show More
1h 17m
Feb 2
Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga, "The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Coping with Crisis in Post-Roman Egypt" (U California Press, 2025)
In the midst of profound political changes in late seventh-century Egypt, after the end of Roman hegemony and during Islamic rule, a bishop named John from the city of Nikiu sat down to pen a chronicle. It is a puzzling and fascinating work that reimagines the established Roman g ... Show More
1h 21m
Jan 2018
Tam T. T. Ngo, “The New Way: Protestantism and the Hmong in Vietnam” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
Think of Christianity in Southeast Asia today and what might come to mind is the predominantly Catholic Philippines, or the work of the Baptist church among linguistic and cultural minorities in Myanmar, or any one of the thousands of Christian communities scattered throughout In ... Show More
46m 43s
Aug 2023
Edyta Roszko, "Fishers, Monks and Cadres: Navigating State, Religion and the South China Sea in Central Vietnam" (NIAS/University of Hawaii Press 2021
This remarkable and timely ethnography explores how fishing communities living on the fringe of the South China Sea in central Vietnam interact with state and religious authorities as well as their farmer neighbors – even while handling new geopolitical challenges. The focus is m ... Show More
52m 47s
Nov 2023
Briana L. Wong, "Cambodian Evangelicalism: Cosmological Hope and Diasporic Resilience" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023)
The Cambodian Civil War and genocide of the late 1960s and ’70s left the country and its diaspora with long-lasting trauma that continues to reverberate through the community. In Cambodian Evangelicalism: Cosmological Hope and Diasporic Resilience (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023), B ... Show More
56m 1s
Aug 2021
Daryl R. Ireland, "John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man" (Baylor UP, 2020)
Dubbed the "Billy Sunday of China" for the staggering number of people he led to Christ, John Song has captured the imagination of generations of readers. His story, as it became popular in the West, possessed memorable, if not necessarily true, elements: Song was converted while ... Show More
1h 41m
Aug 2024
176. The Vietnam War: The Rise of Ho Chi Minh
Vietnam, or Indochina as it was known, had been under French colonial rule since the nineteenth century. This was until the Vietnamese nationalist group, the Viet Minh, took on the French in 1946. Ho Chi Minh, son of a Confucian scholar, former chef in Boston, and lover of French ... Show More
1h 2m
Apr 2024
Arsalan Khan, "The Promise of Piety: Islam and the Politics of Moral Order in Pakistan" (Cornell UP, 2024)
The Promise of Piety: Islam and the Politics of Moral Order in Pakistan (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Arsalan Khan is an incisive ethnographic study of Pakistan’s Tablighi movement. This piety movement attracts Pakistani Muslim men across class, caste, and social contexts a ... Show More
1h 21m