Exploring contemporary issues in the
academic study of religion through podcasts.
The Religious Studies Project is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organization (SCIO) devoted to producing engaging and accessible resources for the contemporary study of religion.
Since 2012, our weekly podcast and written response essays have featured hundreds of scholars sharing their research and expertise in religious studies.
Podcasts and Resources on the Contemporary Social-Scientific Study of Religion
What is curanderismo and where is it practiced? How does it connect to the borderlands? Is it a “folk” religion, and what exactly does that mean? For our first episode on curanderismo, RSP co-editor Andie Alexander is joined by Brett Hendrickson, Jennifer Koshatka Seman, and RSP Features editor, Israel Domínguez. In this discussion, we explore issues of power, identity, historical narrative, cultural contact, race, and much more. Be sure to tune in!
In this month’s discourse, Sidney Castillo is joined by Chris Cotter and Sierra Lawson to discuss the contemporary localized manifestations of Easter and Passover celebrations, a current US Supreme Court Case relating to the First Amendment, and the entanglement of Catholicism and national identity in television’s “Derry Girls”.
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm and Dan Gorman discuss Storm’s thoughts about the future of critical theory from his recent book Metamodernism.
What happens when we reframing spiritual practices as an “experiment with power”? This week, J. Brent Crosson joins Ray Kim to discuss how we can challenge conventional understandings of religion and law in modern nation-states. Be sure to tune in!
RSP co-founder Chris Cotter and Paul Hedges discuss the construction of introductory textbooks in the contemporary world, including issues of positionality, criticality, and decolonization.
In this response to our interview with David G. Robertson, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski builds on and furthers the discussion by exploring alternative approaches to studying gnosticism in conversation with Robertson’s analysis.
In this response to our episode with Khurram Hussain, Matt Sheedy situates Hussain’s work and outlines the usefulness of Hussain’s ‘critical humanist approach’. Sheedy then furthers the conversation by posing some questions about the implications of this approach and how it might translate to other disciplines.
Tancredi Marrone and Andrej Kapcar, in their response to our interview with Bernd Brabec de Mori and Olivia Marcus, unpack common assumptions about ayahuasca and shamanism and outline the benefits of decolonizing current approaches and understandings.
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The views expressed in podcasts, features and responses are the views of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Religious Studies Project or our sponsors. The Religious Studies Project is produced by the Religious Studies Project Association (SCIO), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (charity number SC047750).
