Data Check

Area studies often are defined by their object of inquiry in substantive terms: the study of a more or less defined set of cultural characteristics or civilizations encompassed in a historical, geographical, or linguistic horizon. Among these, one of the area studies that first emerged was Jewish studies, which focuses on the study of Judaism and Jewish communities throughout the world in different historical times. And while it is certainly important to study Jewish history on its own terms, this can hardly be done without observing the cultural context in which that history developed and took form.

In this week’s podcast, Dr. Carsten Wilke talks to Sidney Castillo about the different processes that Judaism and Jewish identities underwent throughout modern European history. Wilke first briefly presents the scope of research of Jewish studies and then outlines how Jewish identity, belief, and community have been shaped by elements of local culture in Europe and beyond.

To further delve into this relationship, Wilke discusses the topic of his presentation at the international conference “Imperial Mysticisms: Piety and Power in Early Modern Empires from a Global Perspective” held at Central European University last November 2019. There he analyzed how the spread and development of modern Kabbalah corresponded with the migration of Sephardic Jews from Iberian empires (Portuguese and Spanish) to Ottoman Palestine.

No doubt this podcast will spark interest in those who are studying/researching in area studies, mysticism, or early modern history, and are actively looking for ways of problematizing their own scope of research.

This month's Discourse! - with Chris Cotter, Ray Kim, and Theo Wildcroft - kicks off with a festive twist on our now-traditional focus upon Covid-19. The panelists discuss the recent decision in the UK to relax lockdown over the Christmas period, and how this intersects with the category of 'religion'. Sticking with Covid-19, the discussion then moves to the production of vaccines and whether these will be considered 'halal' in Islamic communities. This leads to some fascinating conversations around bodily autonomy, agency, the interaction between 'science' and 'religion', and much more.

The discussion then moves to an emotional long-read from The Guardian focusing upon an individual who emerged from a 'locked-in' state and was able to tell the tale. Again, bodily autonomy and agency are the order of the day here. And again, so much more.

Finally, a seemingly amusing story about an unlucky holy stone in Ireland once again raises critical issues surrounding power, agency, and classification.

Links to stories:

• Bittersweet sentiments on lockdown easing in the UK from 'non-Christian' leaders...
• And some not so diplomatic sentiments 
• Halal vaccines
• Jake Haendel's lock-in story
• The unlucky stone

In this last regular episode of the first half of our 2020-2021 season, Breann Fallon talks to Dr. Kathleen McPhillips about her work on the Catholic Church and the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013-2017). In her research, Dr. McPhillips utilised Erving Goffman's work on stigma, and in this episode, she speaks on the process of stigmatisation of survivors by the institutions in which they experienced abuse, both at the time and during their process of disclosure. The conversation turns to the impact of this abuse on the survivor's religious experience, a topic she has written on in her article "Soul Murder" (2018). In discussing the impact on faith, Dr. McPhillips highlights the impact of the commission's findings on the broader religious community, where many experienced the shaking of faith foundations due to the central position of religious institutions in the creation of their worldview. The episode ends with Dr. McPhillips sharing her critically important pilot podcast series, The Survivor Story Podcast, which explores the experiences of 5 survivors of church-based institutional child sexual abuse in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese.

Welcome to our MidYear Special 2020!

It's a COVID-style international spectacular for the ninth(!) annual RSP mid-season special. It's time to play... the Weakest Link!

Join Andie Alexander, Jonathon O'Donnel, Titus Hjelm, Naomi Goldenberg, Sidney Castillo, Russell McCutcheon, Ray Radford, and Megan Goodwin as David Robertson fires questions at them and Chris Cotter remotely operates PowerPoint!

Who will win the coveted fictional research funding?

Aaron Hughes - we apologise in advance!

If this gets you in the festive mood, you might want to check out our back catalogue of festive specials:

• 2012 – Only 60 Seconds!
• 2013 – Nul Point!
• 2014 – Masterbrain!
• 2015 – Fourteen to One!
• 2016 – The Unverifiable Truth-Claim!
• 2017 – Scrape My Barrel!
• 2018 – The Deadline
• 2019 – Only 60 Seconds! (take 2)

Can you believe it has been 10 years? After more than 350 episodes, over 600 contributors, and the rapidly approaching milestone of a million downloads, we're still here doing the weekly work of sharing research in the critical study of religion.

In this special episode of the Religious Studies Project podcast, the RSP team reflects on the legacy of the project and the future of our work. Co-hosts Breann Fallon and David McConeghy solicited reflections from current and former team members, and this episode features some of the highlights including comments by founders Chris Cotter and David Robertson; interviewers Candace Mixon, Sidney Castillo, and Dan Gorman; board members Russell McCutcheon and Carole Cusack, and editors Thomas Coleman and Lauren Osborne. With extreme gratitude for the many, many contributors and listeners to the Religious Studies Project for a decade of scholarship, we're proud to say, "Thanks for listening!"

Professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.'s new book, Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, pulls few punches. It begins with and dwells deeply on what Baldwin, a towering mid-20th century American literary figure, called the "lie at the heart of America." The lie is the value gap -- the ways America has elevated the worth of white lives over those of people in other racialized groups. Baldwin's unfettered honesty about this lie, explains Dr. Glaude, means that we have a chance to imagine a world that is otherwise. Just as Baldwin went abroad as an "elsewhere" from which to renew and sustain his critique of American identity, today Dr. Glaude urges us to begin again. We can, he argues, "choose to be better. We need only build a world where that choice can be made with relative ease." The choice to see things differently confronts the hard truths America hides from itself, especially those which are bound up in the origin stories Americans tell ourselves about who we are and where we have come from. To see those truths as Baldwin did means the opportunity to begin again, starting with recognizing past hurts and ongoing harms without letting go of the promise of redemption or even salvation that follows. On this 2020 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, please enjoy this timely and critical discussion about race and religion in the U.S.

Back in 2011, Charlotte Ward and David Voas published an article addressing the synthesis of New Age spirituality with conspiracy thinking as "conspirituality." A decade later, their analysis seems critical for understanding figures like the QAnon Shaman, widespread anti-vaccine and COVID-19 disinformation campagins, and, more broadly, the rapid spread of America of America's "paranoid politics" as much of the media's dominant form of dialogue about issues ranging from vaccines to climate change.

In this January episode of our current events podcast, Discourse!, Savannah Finver speaks with Candace Mixon and Suzanne Newcombe as the team wrestles with the QAnon Shaman and the January 6th attack on the U.S. Presidential election certification, pandemic anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns, and growing evidence of the "conspirituality."

Be sure to take a look at the at-home links below. Don't forget! If you see a current events article or story you think we should include in our monthly Discourse! episodes, please send it to editors@religousstudieproject.com or tweet it to us @projectrs.

This month's links include:

• Chris Cuomo interviews Q Anon Shaman
• Senator Susan Collins admits she believed "Iranians" were attacking the White House
• Litchfield Cathedral turned into a vaccination center.
• RSPH struggles with low South Asian vaccine rates
• Religion Dispatches piece on the New Age blending with the radical right

Original Source for "Conspirituality" by Ward and Voas:

Charlotte Ward & Prof. David Voas (2011). "The Emergence of Conspirituality," Journal of Contemporary Religion, 26:1, 103-121, DOI: 10.1080/13537903.2011.539846

In this episode, RSP co-editor Breann Fallon sat down with long-time friend of the podcast, Professor Carole Cusack of the University of Sydney to discuss sacred trees. Cusack has published widely on the topic including her 2011 monograph The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and a recent special volume of the Journal of Religion and Nature edited by Cusack. Beginning with Cusack's journey to studying the sacred tree, the conversation turns to specific examples of the Fortingall Yew and Glastonbury Thorn, both of which connect to Christianity. Turning to contemporary examples, Fallon and Cusack discuss the 2020 destruction of the Djab Wurrung tree in Australia.

What is a myth? What might we mean by myth-making? What can an approach to how people make myths and tell stories in their everyday lives bring to the study of 'religion' and 'non-religion'? And what might Gandalf and Captain Picard have to do with any of this? Joining Chris to discuss myth-making and its role among non-religious people, and climate and environmental activists is Dr. Tim Stacey of Leiden University.

Don't miss our earlier episode with Dr. Stacey about Myth and post-liberalism or his book.

Religious studies approaches to the environment have long privileged Western ecological frameworks. Anna Gade's work, Muslim Environmentalisms reframes this area, both critiquing and building upon the tools of religious studies (RS) and environmental humanities (EH). Religious studies, for its part, has privileged Jewish and Christian understandings of key ideas such as nature and wilderness. This bias has left the field less capable of responding to the rising need for studies about efforts globally by many religious groups to address climate crises. EH has also suffered from this overreliance, and Gade's work identifying the different approaches toward the environment of her Indonesian Muslim interlocutors is a critical step forward. Interviewed by Lauren Osborne and David McConeghy, this episode discusses the challenges this interdisciplinary work faces and shares some of the reasons why the inclusion of Muslim perspectives into the broader conversation about religion and the environment is so desperately needed today.