The Classical Ideas Podcast

Justin Friel (He/Him) is currently a Ph.D. student in the Joint Doctoral Program with the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology. His research explores how religion, culture, and politics influence and affect one another and the ways these forces shape the formation and performance of Queer identities. Within that, Justin's research interests include white Christian nationalism, TikTok, popular culture, and utopia. Justin has an M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy and currently works time as a therapist focusing on sex, sexuality, spirituality, and identity.

Visit Justin Friel online: https://www.theholyqueer.com/

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Heather R. White is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department and Gender and Queer Studies Program at the University of Puget Sound and a Research Associate at the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Her research focuses on religion, identity, and politics with an emphasis on queer, post-secular, and critical race theories as frameworks for interpreting recent U.S. history. White is the author of Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

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Arwa Hussain is a Ph.D. candidate in Religions and Cultures and 2022-23 Public Scholar at Concordia University in Montreal. Her current research interests deal with Islamic communities, particularly her own community, the Dawoodi Bohras, gender and agency, and social media platforms. Her dissertation combines digital ethnography and personal experience to understand how pious Dawoodi Bohra women embed their agency within a religious community and represent themselves on social media, the first study of  its kind to shed light on this dynamic community and its women. Her doctoral research is supported by Concordia University and the FRQSC, awarded by the government of Quebec. Arwa holds an M.A. and M.Phil. degree in History from the University of Karachi, Pakistan, where she received  the Hamida Khuhro Gold Medal of Excellence. As a Concordia Public Scholar, Arwa has produced a number of pieces of  public scholarship, including for the Montreal Gazette, The Conversation, and the Concordia blogs; as well as a spotlight roundtable discussion on the potentials and pitfalls of social media for Muslim women at 4th Space, Concordia University.

Follow Arwa Hussain on Twitter: https://twitter.com/arwahussainphd

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort

Orit Avishai is an ethnographer at Fordham University, where she teaches in the Sociology Department and in the Program on Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work considers how ideology and culture, broadly defined, shape social institutions, identities, political dialogue, and cultural practices. Her recent work has focused on Jewish Orthodoxy, and her book, Queer Judaism, LGBT Activism and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel is forthcoming from NYU Press. Her other work has been published in a variety of venues, including Gender & Society, The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and AJS Review. Her recent public-facing writing has appeared in The Conversation, The Katz Center Blog, and Religion Dispatches. Dr. Avishai has degrees from The University of California at Berkeley, the Yale Law School, and Tel Aviv University Law School.

Buy "Queer Judaism, LGBT Activism, and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel https://nyupress.org/9781479810031/queer-judaism/

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/

Jeannie Sellick is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia’s Religious Studies Ph.D. program. She defended her dissertation, “The Strongest Seed: Jerome’s Fashioning of an Ascetic Masculinity in Late Antiquity” in June 2022, and she is perpetually excited to share it with anyone who asks. She specializes in constructions of gender and sexuality in the religious traditions of the ancient and late antique Mediterranean, with a particular focus on queer masculinities. When she’s not teaching or writing, you can find Jeannie hanging out with her geriatric dog, Missy, critiquing Marvel movies, and perfecting her buffalo wing recipe.

Follow Dr. Jeannie Sellick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheAtheistNun

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort

M. Cooper Minister is Associate Professor of Religion at Shenandoah University, where they teach courses on death, medicine, sex, gender, and theories of religion. Their books include Rape Culture on Campus and Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods (co-edited with Sarah Bloesch). Their current project is a memoir about being diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at 33 and learning to persist in between life and death on the dance floor.

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort

Dustin Gavin (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Departments of Religious Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. He received his B.A. in Journalism from Howard University, an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School, and completed his second M.A. in Religion and Visual Arts at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. Dustin's research examines the overlap and confluence of sacred and profane idioms to examine the histories, aesthetics, and embodied performances of black women, sissies, and femmes across U.S. Southern regions.

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Listen to the complete Sacred Writes-Classical Ideas collection: 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0JzteHE3RIyOKA9xosmK6W

Indhira Udofia (she/they) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Joint Program in Social Work at NC A&T University and UNC Greensboro. Their dissertation project looks at the impact of religious trauma on Black Millennials and Generation Z, exploring the impact of institutional violence on gendered and sexual minorities within Black religious spaces. Her extensive experience providing therapeutic and spiritual services  in clinical and community settings (since 2009) and faith communities (since 2014), shaped her deep passion for helping communities and individuals recover from trauma, especially in spaces of spiritual abuse and grief. Indhira believes that their work is a collaborative effort to empower others in their own healing journey. Using strengths-based methodologies and client-based appropriate rituals, restorative practices, and trauma-informed consultation, they work to address power dynamics, conflict resolution, self-care, and other issues that may arise within a healing framework, for the flourishing of the collective. Indhira’s love of the arts, especially music, and  her travels all over the world, allow her a perspective that is inclusive, welcoming, and informed.

Follow Indhira Udofia:

-https://twitter.com/BlaQTraumaNerd

-https://linktr.ee/imudofia

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Listen to the complete Sacred Writes-Classical Ideas collection: 

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In the early 1960s, thousands of Black activists used nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation at lunch counters, movie theaters, skating rinks, public pools, and churches across the United States, battling for, and winning, social change. Organizers against segregation had used litigation and protests for decades but not until the advent of nonviolence did they succeed in transforming ingrained patterns of white supremacy on a massive scale. In this book, Anthony C. Siracusa unearths the deeper lineage of anti-war pacifist activists and thinkers from the early twentieth century who developed nonviolence into a revolutionary force for Black liberation.

Telling the story of how this powerful political philosophy came to occupy a central place in the Black freedom movement by 1960, Siracusa challenges the idea that nonviolent freedom practices faded with the rise of the Black Power movement. He asserts nonviolence's staying power, insisting that the indwelling commitment to struggle for freedom collectively in a spirit of nonviolence became, for many, a lifelong commitment. In the end, what was revolutionary about the nonviolent method was its ability to assert the basic humanity of Black Americans, to undermine racism's dehumanization, and to insist on the right to be.

Buy the book: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663005/nonviolence-before-king/

The illuminations of The Saint John’s Bible have delighted many with their imaginative takes on Scripture. But many struggle to appreciate the calligraphy more deeply than merely noting its beauty. Does calligraphy mean something? How is it beautiful?

This book, written by a biblical scholar who has spent years working with this Bible, shows how calligraphic art powerfully interplays visual form, textual content, and creative process. Homrighausen proposes five lenses for this artform: gardens, weaving, pilgrimage, touching, and enfleshing words. Each of these lenses springs from the poetry of the Song of Songs, its illuminations in The Saint John’s Bible, and medieval ways of understanding the scribe’s craft. While these metaphors for calligraphic art draw from this particular illuminated Bible, this book is aimed at all lovers of calligraphy, art, and sacred text.

Jonathan Homrighausen, a doctoral candidate in Hebrew Bible at Duke University, teaches in Judaic Studies at the College of William & Mary. His research explores the intersection of Hebrew Bible, calligraphic art, and scribal craft. He is the author of Illuminating Justice: The Ethical Imagination of The Saint John's Bible (Liturgical Press, 2018) and articles in Religion and the Arts, Image, Teaching Theology and Religion, Transpositions, and Visual Commentary on Scripture.

Buffalo isn’t just a city full of great wings. There is a great hot dog tradition, from Greek- originated “Texas red hots” to year-round charcoal-grilling at Ted’s that puts Manhattan’s dirty water dogs to shame. This is also a city of great sandwiches. It’s a place where capicola gets layered on grilled sausage, where sautéed dandelions traditionally make up the greens in a comestible called steak- in-the-grass, and chicken fingers pack into soft Costanzo’s sub rolls with Provolone, tomato, lettuce, blue cheese dressing, and Frank’s RedHot Sauce to become something truly naughty.

Food and travel writer Arthur Bovino ate his research, taking the reader to the bars, the old-school Polish and Italian-American eateries, the Burmese restaurants, and the new-school restaurants tapping into the region’s rich agricultural bounty. With all this experience under his belt (and stretching it), Bovino has created the essential guide to food in Buffalo.

Arthur Bovino is a restaurant, food media, and travel writer. The Daily Meal’s founding Eat/Dine editor, Bovino is a graduate of New York City’s International Culinary Institute. He has appeared on the Today Show and ABC News.

Buy the book: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781682681220

George Tyrrell insisted that the quest for the historical Jesus was no more than scholars staring into a well to see their own reflections staring back. Jesus is the mirror image of those who study him. A similar phenomenon accompanies the quest for the historical Magi, those mysterious travelers who came from theEast, following a star to Bethlehem.

In this work, ancient historian and scholar Eric Vanden Eykel helps readers better understand both the Magi and the ancient and modern interpreters who have tried to study them. He shows how, from a mere twelve verses in the Gospel of Matthew, a varied and vast literary and artistic tradition was born. The Magi examines the birth of the Magi story;its enrichments, embellishments, and expansions in apocryphal writing and early Christian preaching;its artistic expressions in catacombs, icons, and paintings and its modern legacy in novels, poetry, and music.

Throughout, the book explores the fascination the Magi story elicits in both ancient and modern readers and what the legacy of the Magi story tells us about its storytellers--and ourselves.

https://www.bradonishi.com/

The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture's preparation for war. Religion scholar and former insider Bradley Onishi maps the origins of White Christian nationalism and traces its offshoots in Preparing for War.

Combining his own experiences in the youth groups and prayer meetings of the 1990s with an immersive look at the steady blending of White grievance politics with evangelicalism, Onishi crafts an engrossing account of the years-long campaign of White Christian nationalism that led to January 6. How did the rise of what Onishi calls the New Religious Right, between 1960 and 2015, give birth to violent White Christian nationalism during the Trump presidency and beyond? What propelled some of the most conservative religious communities in the country--communities of which Onishi was once a part--to ignite a cold civil war?

Through chapters on White supremacy and segregationist theologies, conspiracy theories, the Christian-school movement, purity culture, and the right-wing media ecosystem, Onishi pulls back the curtain on a subculture that birthed a movement and has taken a dangerous turn. In taut and unsparing prose, Onishi traces the migration of many White Christians to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming in what is known as the American Redoubt. Learning the troubling history of the New Religious Right and the longings and logic of White Christian nationalism is deeply alarming. It is also critical for preserving the shape of our democracy for years to come.

Robin Waterfield is an independent scholar and translator living in southern Greece. In addition to thirty volumes of translations of works of Greek literature, he is the author of numerous books, ranging from children’s fiction to Greek history, most recently The Making of a King, also published by the University of Chicago Press

The complete surviving works of Epictetus, the most influential Stoic philosopher from antiquity.

“Some things are up to us and some are not.”
 
Epictetus was born into slavery around the year 50 CE, and, upon being granted his freedom, he set himself up as a philosophy teacher. After being expelled from Rome, he spent the rest of his life living and teaching in Greece. He is now considered the most important exponent of Stoicism, and his surviving work comprises a series of impassioned discourses, delivered live and recorded by his student Arrian, and the Handbook, Arrian’s own take on the heart of Epictetus’s teaching.
 
In Discourses, Epictetus argues that happiness depends on knowing what is in our power to affect and what is not. Our internal states and our responses to events are up to us, but the events themselves are assigned to us by the benevolent deity, and we should treat them—along with our bodies, possessions, and families—as matters of indifference, simply making the best use of them we can.

Together, the Discourses and Handbook constitute a practical guide to moral self-improvement, as Epictetus explains the work and exercises aspirants need to do to enrich and deepen their lives. Edited and translated by renowned scholar Robin Waterfield, this book collects the complete works of Epictetus, bringing to modern readers his insights on how to cope with death, exile, the people around us, the whims of the emperor, fear, illness, and much more.

If an eighteenth-century parson told you that the difference between "civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far," the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by an American missionary in 1971. In a sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses--discourses, specifically, of race.

Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as "other" due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Purported heathens have also contributed to the ongoing significance of the concept, promoting solidarity through their opposition to white American Christianity. Gin Lum looks to figures like Chinese American activist Wong Chin Foo and Ihanktonwan Dakota writer Zitkála-Sá, who proudly claimed the label of "heathen" for themselves.

Race continues to operate as a heathen inheritance in the United States, animating Americans' sense of being a world apart from an undifferentiated mass of needy, suffering peoples. Heathen: Religion and Race in American History (Harvard UP, 2022) thus reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.