In the sprawling city of São Paulo, a weekly practice known as devotion to souls (devoção às almas) draws devotees to Catholic churches, cemeteries, and other sites associated with tragic or unjust deaths. The living pray and light candles for the souls of the dead, remembering events and circumstances in a rite of collective suffering. Yet contemporary devo ... Show More
Aug 12
Kevin P. Donovan, "Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In his book, Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Kevin Donovan argues that East African decolonization was not coterminous with political sovereignty but rather consisted of a longer process of reorganizing h ... Show More
1h 2m
Aug 21
Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025)
Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, DavisNairobi, known as the Green City in the Sun, has taken shape through anti-urban ideologies that insist that the city cannot be home for most residents. Based on decades of e ... Show More
53m 28s
Aug 19
Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Alexandra Grey speaks with Dr Zozan Balci about Zozan’s new book, Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage: Language, Identity and Belonging in the Lives of Cultural In-betweeners, published in 2025 by Routledge.. The conversatio ... Show More
41m 1s
Sep 2024
Fabio Rambelli, "Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
In Japan, a country popularly perceived as highly secularized and technologically advanced, ontological assumptions about spirits (tama or tamashii) seem to be quite deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric. From ancestor cults to anime, spirits, ghosts, and other invisible dimens ... Show More
57m 24s
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
Apr 2025
Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago" (U California Press, 2025)
Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been written on the interaction of missionaries with local culture. Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago ... Show More
1h 9m
Feb 2024
Laurence Ralph, "Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him" (Grand Central Publishing, 2023)
In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He was nineteen. His killer, Julius Williams, was seventeen. It was the second time the teens had encountered one another. The first, five y ... Show More
48m 50s
Apr 2021
Richard C. Jankowsky, "Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form (University of Chicago Press, 2021) by Richard C. Jankowsky (an Associate Professor of music at Tufts University) is a rich ethnographic study of the sonic and ritual landscapes of complex religious communities in ... Show More
1h 3m
Oct 2024
Fazil Moradi, "Being Human: Political Modernity and Hospitality in Kurdistan-Iraq" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
In the contemporary world, political violence has been an unavoidable issue for everyone. It is therefore essential to criticize political violence in a textured way. The Iraqi Ba’th state’s Anfāl operations (1987-1991) is one of the twentieth century’s ultimate acts of destruct ... Show More
1h 24m
Jul 2024
The Church and Modern Science | Prof. Christopher Baglow
This lecture was given on May 7th, 2024, at University of California, San Diego.
For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events
About the Speaker: Dr. Baglow is Professor of the Practice of Theology and the Director of the Science and ... Show More
1 h
Dec 2024
Hannah Gould et al., "Death and Funeral Practices in Japan" (Routledge, 2024)
Death and Funeral Practices in Japan (Routledge, 2024) is an essential introductory text an often overlooked element of cultural expression. The books offers a succinct history to the development of funeral practices over time, and describes a typical contemporary funeral in deta ... Show More
42m 24s
Jul 2024
Does Truth Change? John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development | Prof. Chad Pecknold
This lecture was given on March 20th, 2024, at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events
About the Speaker: Dr. Chad C. Pecknold earned his PhD in Systematic Theology at the University o ... Show More
52m 55s
Aug 2020
#054: Awakening in the Dream: Ibn Arabi, Virtual Reality & Ultimate Reality w/ Oludamini Ogunnaike
Oludamini Ogunnaike holds a PhD in African Studies and the Study of Religion from Harvard University, and is Assistant Professor of African Religious Thought at the University of Virginia.
Oludamini Ogunnaike is a scholar of African, Islamic, and Religious Studies, with a focus o ... Show More
1h 36m