MarginaliaReviewofBooks

Poet Leonard Schwartz and philosopher Kathleen Eamon discuss Schwartz's new book "The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Middle East Crisis."

There has never been an America without Muslims, and they have played a crucial role in the cultural production of the United States. Kristian Petersen talks with Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, about his new book Muslims and the Making of America.

While Christianity has had a long history in China it’s only been the past century where Chinese Theology has taken shape. Kristian Petersen talks with Chloë Starr, Associate Professor at Yale University Divinity School, about her new book Chinese Theology: Text and Context.

Christianity has greatly shaped popular filmmaking in Ghana. Kristian Petersen talks with Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Utrecht, about her new book Sensational Movies - Video, Vision and Christianity in Ghana.

Racial anxiety, bigotry, and anti-immigrant sentiment has escalated in post 9/11 America but that history is often forgotten or ignored. Kristian Petersen talks with Deepa Iyer, Senior Fellow at the Center for Social Inclusion, about her new book We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future. NOTE: Since I spoke with Deepa Iyer, President Obama ended NSEERS on December 22, 2016.

On this month's Impolite Conversation, our friend Courtney Bruntz stops by the studio to talk us through which forms of religion are legal in contemporary China, which ones are banned, and which ones fall in between the two. And in a special year-end One Last Thing, we look back at OLTs past and find the ones that best sum up the year gone by.

Atheists have been battling the gods for as long as the faithful have been admiring them. Joseph Ryan Kelly speaks with Tim Whitmarsh, the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge, about his new book Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World.

Because of Jacob Neusner, the scholarly study of Judaism flourishes in secular universities, not just rabbinical schools. Kristian Petersen talks with Aaron W. Hughes, Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester, about his new book Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast.

Black culture plays a critical role in the construction Muslim American identity. Dave Krueger speaks with Su'ad Abdul Khabeer about her new book Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States published by New York University Press in 2016.

The Indie Scholar Podcast hosted by Dave Krueger. Featuring scholars working at the edges of academia.

Messages from the spirit world offered an Afro-Creole community in New Orleans a forum for political activism inspired by republican ideals. Dave Krueger speaks with Emily Suzanne Clark about her book, _A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans_ published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2016.

In this Impolite Conversation Supplemental, Dan and Tim talk (and vent, and curse a little) about the outcome of the presidential election and what it might mean for American Muslims and white evangelicals.

Santería, as a site of analytical inqury, disrupts many of dominant theoretical approaches to the study of transnational religion. Kristian Petersen talks with Aisha Beliso-De Jesús, Associate Professor of African American Religions at Harvard Divinity School, about her new book Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion.

Professor Omid Safi reflects on the choices facing American Muslims in light of the 2016 Presidential elections. Safi is the Director of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center.

This month on Impolite Conversation, we talk with a scholar who wants to challenge the conventional wisdom on the "God gap," and then look back on the 2016 campaign, as well as forward to the next four years. And in One Last Thing, Dan has a thing for bulletproof guys in hoodies and Tim ruminates on a little-discussed aspect of the polling process.

There was no such thing as the Bible when the ancient Jewish literature was composed. With a more expansive view of sources, we can glimpse our way into a completely different picture of how ancient people might have imagined their own literary world. Joseph Ryan Kelly speaks with Eva Mroczek, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Davis, about her new book The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity.

What does Britain look like from the perspective of Muslims across the Eighteenth century until today? Kristian Petersen talks with Claire Chambers, Lecturer in Global Literature at the University of York, about her new book Britain Through Muslim Eyes: Literary Representations, 1780-1988.

In this interview, Dave Krueger speaks with Julie L. Holcomb, Assistant Professor of Museum Studies at Baylor University. Her new book is Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy.

Greco-Roman conceptions of divine and human law forced Judaism to examine and debate the divine identity of Mosaic law. In this special extended edition of First Impressions, Joseph Ryan Kelly talks with Christine Hayes, the Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Religious Studies in classical Judaica at Yale University about her new book What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives.

On this episode of Impolite Conversation, Miguel de la Torre joins us to talk about how the marginalization of Latinx culture creates new space for Biblical interpretation. And in One Last Thing, Dan has been re-re-re-watching Captain America: Civil War and Tim has found A Few Reasonable Words to keep the pain away.