Jul 25
Samantha Iyer, "Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States" (Columbia UP, 2026)
The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of th ... Show More
45m 42s
Jul 22
Nick Yablon, "From the Skyscraper to the Wildflower: C. G. Hine's 1905 Photographic Survey of Broadway" (Columbia UP, 2026)
In 1905, when Broadway was already the most famous thoroughfare in New York City, a recreational photographer from Newark, New Jersey named Charles Gilbert Hine set out to document the street’s entire length. Taking pictures from downtown Bowling Green and its skyscrapers to upt ... Show More
37m 13s
Jul 15
Nora L. Rubel, "Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of the Settlement Cook Book" (Columbia UP, 2026)
In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook simple and nutritious food, yet have it attractive and inexpensive as ... Show More
44m 32s
Apr 2024
M. Cooper Minister and Sarah J. Bloesch, "Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Method (Bloomsbury, 2023) examines the analytic tools of scholars in religious studies, as well as in related disciplines that have shaped the field including cultural approaches from anthropology, history, ... Show More
28m 2s
Jul 2003
Charles Haynes, Philip Hamburger, and Cheryl Crazy Bull — Religious Liberty in America: The Legacy of Church and State
At the center of our history of church and state is a troublesome irony. What began as an attempt to guarantee religious tolerance in the new world has at various times been commandeered by the most chauvinistic movements America has known. In spite of this, religious liberty has ... Show More
52 m
Apr 2024
Vaia Touna and Richard Newton, "Fieldnotes in the Critical Study of Religion: Revisiting Classical Theorists" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Fieldnotes in the Critical Study of Religion: Revisiting Classical Theorists (Bloomsbury, 2023) introduces students to the so-called classics of the field from the 19th and 20th centuries, whilst challenging readers to apply a critical lens. Instead of representing scholars and t ... Show More
56m 4s
Oct 2024
Shared Paths: Exploring Jewish and Muslim Experiences in America
This week on International Horizons, John Torpey, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, speaks with sociologists Mucahit Bilici and Samuel Heilman about their book, Following Similar Paths: What Jews and Muslims Can Learn From One Another (University of California Press, 2024). ... Show More
40m 42s
Mar 2023
What Happened To Separation Of Church And State? with Dr. Lauren Turek
A pastor, a president, and a foreign political leader step into a National Prayer Breakfast. What happens next? A whole lot of mingling between church and state. This week, Dr. Lauren Turek joins Jonathan to explore how evangelicals have influenced American politics—domestically ... Show More
59m 48s
Oct 2020
Danielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019)
In many popular accounts of contemporary “Western” society there is an inherent contradiction between the principles underlying liberal secularism and Islam. This type of binary discourse about “religion” and “secular” naturalizes these differences and promotes the seeming rigidi ... Show More
56m 8s
Feb 2019
Matthew Bowman, "Christian: The Politics of a Word in America" (Harvard UP, 2018)
The intersection of religion and politics in the United States is one of the nation's most enduring conversations. Christian: The Politics of a Word in America(Harvard University Press, 2018) by Dr. Matthew Bowman at Henderson State University, was recently named one of the five ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 2022
WOF 359: Religion, Politics, and Intolerance
<p>Friends, what is the role of religion in civic life? Must we bracket religion from the political sphere? Those are pressing questions as we near the midterm elections. On today's "Word on Fire Show," Brandon Vogt and I discuss the relationship between politics and religion and ... Show More
28m 8s
Jan 2024
Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad, "Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and Its Containment" (Routledge, 2022)
Drawing on the extensive empirical field research of six scholars of religion and politics, Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad's Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and Its Containment (Routledge, 2022) directs attention to frictions around reli ... Show More
53m 19s
From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many Americans have understood their country and themselves. Ideas of religion, politics, and the interplay between them are no less crucial to how the United States has engaged with the world beyond its borders. Yet scholarship on American religion tends to bracket the dome ... Show More
<p>This episode is on the scholarly academic side. We discuss the very commonly recurring problems of essentializing, generalizing and the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" in discussions about religion.</p><br><p><br></p><p>References:</p><p>Coleman, Simon (2010). “Recent Developments ... Show More
