The Religious Studies Project

Is Religious Literacy social justice? In this week's podcast with Professor Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, she discusses the University of Vermont’s new “Religious Literacy for Professionals” certificate and why religious studies does vital work for the academy.

Vivian Asimos, Chris Cotter, Time Hutchings and Suzanne Owen discuss the intersections of Media and the Study of Religion.

In this week's podcast, we speak with Bradley Onishi about the ways in which philosophy of religion has thought "with" religion rather than for or against religion. "It's possible," he says, "to hold an enchanted secularity" if we think about religions themselves as tools for questioning our basic assumptions about the world.

This decade’s first episode of Discourse! is hosted by Vivian Asimos, with guests Aled Thomas and Michael Munnick. This time, the theme is “communication” – fittingly enough. The conversation covers stories about different models of Christianity among evangelical Trump supporters, the recent resurgence of the use of “cult” in popular media, Greta Thunberg as a […]

Americans generally affirm the importance of separating "church" and "state." But what does church--or religion--mean? Hear two leading religious freedom lawyers discuss the meaning of religious freedom in key #SCOTUS cases, including one before the Court this term.

For our eighth(!) annual special, Only Sixty Seconds returns! This time, Chris Cotter is your host, as David G. Robertson returns to defend his 2018 crown against Bettina Schmidt, Douglas Davies and Theo Wildcroft. We may not have avoided repetition, but I do not hesitate in promising you no deviation from hilarity!

Religious studies scholars (and policy experts) Susan Hayward and Peter Mandaville join the Religious Studies Project for Discourse in December 2019. They discuss how classifying conflicts as religious or not can clarify–or obscure–the complexities of those conflicts. The conversation includes examples from the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and the […]

In this episode, Professor Molly Bassett, chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Georgia State University speaks about her program’s efforts to develop applied religious studies master’s certificates in “Religion and Aging” and “Nonprofit Management.”

In this podcast, Chris Cotter is joined by Dr Stacey Gutkowski to discuss what it means to be a ‘secular Jewish Israeli millennial’.

Unbelief has often been defined as either ignorance or rejection of religious systems, but this week's guests David Herbert and Josh Bullock see far more diversity in the ways one can be nonreligious based on their research on Gen Y in Europe.

In this week's podcast, Skidmore College Professor Bradley Onishi speaks about Straight White American Jesus, a podcast he co-hosts with Dan Miller that blends insider religious experience with academic expertise about American Evangelicalism.

Chris Cotter is joined by Susannah Crockford and Sierra Lawson in this month's edition of discourse, discussing college football politics in Alabama, Donald Trump's new 'spiritual adviser', a Day of the Dead/Dia de Muertos memorializing migrants who have died at the US border, Armistice/Remembrance/Veterans day rituals, and the recent controversy surrounding QR codes at the AAR-SBL.

In this week's podcast with Gabor Klaniczay we learn about cases of stigmata during the 19th and 20th century in Europe, where medical discourses clashed with as well as supported religious discourses about the authenticity and meaning of famous stigmata cases like Italian Padre Pio.

Aaron W. Hughes, the keynote speaker for the #JZSatNTNU Conference in Trondheim, Norway, talks conference panelist Andie Alexander about the legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith's work for the field of religious studies.

In today’s podcast, Professor R. Andrew Chesnut connects Brazil’s colonial past to its pluralist present and explains why folk saint devotion to Santa Muerte or Lady Death is one of the fastest growing religious movements in the world.