The Religious Studies Project

Harm, AI, and Religion | Discourse! June 2023

In our final Discourse! episode of the season, Andie Alexander, Craig Martin, and Paul-François Tremlett team up to discuss the concept of “harm” and religion as it perta

Mediatizing “Evangelicalism”: Authenticity, Identity, and Power

In today’s episode, Daniel Jones talks with Travis Warren Cooper about Cooper’s recent book, The Digital Evangelicals: Contesting Authority and Authenticity After the New

What’s Sincerity Got to Do With American Secularism?

In this episode, Charles McCrary joins Matt Sheedy to discuss the role of sincerity in shaping American conceptions of religion that he explores in his recent book Sincer

What’s Happening Down Under? | Discourse! May 2023

For our May episode, Discourse! heads Down Under once again as ⅔ of our usual suspects—Carole Cusack & Raymond Radford—explore religion, politics, life and death in the A

Charting the Playful & Proper Study of Religion

In this week’s episode Sam Gill joins RSP editor Andie Alexander to discuss his recent book The Proper Study of Religion: Building on Jonathan Z. Smith. They consider dif

Supreme Court to Coulter: Negotiating Religion in the Public Sphere | Discourse! April 2023

In this episode, religious studies scholars Matt Sheedy and Tyler Tully, along with host Candace Mixon, discuss the ramifications of the in-progress Supreme Court case Gr

Keep Hope Alive: Preparing for White Christian Nationalism

In this week’s episode, Raymond Radford is joined by Bradley Onishi to discuss his new book Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and Wh

Religion under Attack? | Discourse! March 2023

This month’s Discourse is hosted by Suzanne Newcombe, who’s joined by Michael Munnick and Carmen Becker. They start by discussing the recent shooting at a Jehovah’s Witne

The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: Religion without God

In this interview, Dan Gorman talks with Leigh Eric Schmidt about his 2021 book The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism. Despite its

Spitting on the Sacred: Politics and Redefining Profanation

In this episode, Dr. Finbarr Curtis joins Jacob Noblett to discuss the growing phenomena of profanation as it concerns American politics and culture. Rather than define a

Religious Literacy and Its Discontents | Discourse! February 2023

Join Benjamin P. Marcus, Paulina Gruffman, and Charles McCrary for this month's #RSPdiscourse as they discuss a recent Pew survey on religious literacy and the so-called

Navigating the Discursive Study of Religion

In today's episode, Teemu Taira and Andie Alexander discuss how social groups negotiate the category 'religion' and the relevance of the discursive methods in the study o

Where was God?: Jewish Theological Responses to the Holocaust

Where was God during the Holocaust? There is no straightforward answer to this and there are different viewpoints across the different streams of Judaism. Join Dr. Breann

Critical Approaches to Studying Religion in Film

Ting Guo chats with Rebekka King and Tenzan Eaghall about their new edited volume, Representing Religion in Film (Bloomsbury 2022), and they explore the “ideological blin

Oversimplified Binaries | Discourse! January 2023

This month's Discourse! features our co-founder Chris Cotter, Lauren Horn Griffin, and Kristi Boone complicating and unpacking oversimplified binaries—be sure to tune in!

Interrogating the Interrogators: Managing Muslims in Germany

In this episode host Candace Mixon and guest Schirin Amir-Moazami discuss Amir-Moazami’s book, _Interrogating Muslims: The Liberal-Secular Matrix of Integration_ as a sta

Realities (Altered & Virtual) | Discourse! November 2022

Join host Sidney Castillo and guests Jordan Loewen-Colón and Sharday Mosurinjohn for the bumper final Discourse! episode of 2022!

Queens of the World | Discourse! October 2022

This month's Discourse! welcomes back Founding Editor Chris Cotter to the host's chair, along with guests Ting Guo and Carmen Celestini. They first discuss Queen Elizabet

Secular Spaces? | Discourse! September 2022

This month's Discourse! centres on questions of the secular and the religious in the contemporary public square. What does it mean to be a secular space? How do instituti

Shifting the Focus of Graduate Education in the Study of Religion

Join Carmen Becker and Andie Alexander for the RSP's 400th episode where they discuss the new international MA program at Leibniz University, Hannover.