EP 214: Social Media and Hinduism w/Dr. Dheepa Sundaram
Release Date: 09/12/2021
EP 348: Dr. Kira Ganga Kieffer on "Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America"
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Kira Ganga Kieffer (Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Wesleyan University; PhD, Boston University, 2023) studies contemporary American spiritualities, health, gender, and marketing. Her first book, a history of religion and vaccine skepticism, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is the author of “Smelling Things: Essential Oils and Essentialism in Contemporary American Spirituality,” in Religion & American Culture (2021) and “Manifesting Millions: How Women’s Spiritual Entrepreneurship Genders Capitalism,” in Nova Religio (2020), which...
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EP 347: Beyond Wellness with Liz Bucar
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of four books, including the award-winning Stealing My Religion and Pious Fashion. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. For more about how religion shapes us all, even if we don’t believe, subscribe to Liz’s newsletter at LizBucar.com. In the chaos of today’s world,...
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EP 346: Deepak Chopra-Jeffrey Epstein Connections & the Spirituality Industry Crisis w/Dr. Ann Gleig
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Ann Gleig (Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies, University of Central Florida; PhD, Rice University, 2010) studies spirituality emerging from the encounter between Buddhism and American culture, particularly meditation and mindfulness. The author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019); and co-editor with Scott A. Mitchell of The Oxford Handbook of American Buddhism, she has published widely about how the incorporation of psychotherapeutic and social justice frameworks have transformed American Buddhist practices. A recipient of a...
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EP 345: Relational Ethics and Indigenous Plant Medicines w/Dr. Natalie Avalos
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Natalie Avalos (Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder; PhD, University of California Santa Barbara, 2015) is an ethnographer of religion whose research examines contemporary Indigenous religious life, healing historical trauma, and decolonization. A Chicana of Mexican Indigenous descent, born and raised in the Bay Area, Dr. Avalos is currently working on her manuscript, titled Decolonizing Metaphysics: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal. She served as a co-PI for a Luce Foundation-funded research group at the UC Humanities...
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EP 344: Altered States of Consciousness w/Dr. Michiel van Elk
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Michiel van Elk (1980) is a researcher and writer in the field of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience. Having received his PhD at the Donders Institute, the Netherlands, he has worked at several international institutions including the University of California Santa Barbara the École Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne in Switzerland and Stanford University. He is currently affiliated as associate professor at Leiden University. He has conducted pioneering work on psychedelics, altered states of consciousness, feelings of awe, the evolution of religion and mystical experiences. His work,...
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Ep 343: Moral Courage for Our Times w/Dr. Laine Walters Young
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Laine Walters Young is the Assistant Director of the Cal Turner Program for Moral Leadership in the Professions at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD from Vanderbilt in Religion, Psychology and Culture, and considers herself a feminist care ethicist working at the intersection of psychology and ethics. She has experience in non-profit administration as well as a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School where she studied Religion in Public Life, storytelling, and the possibilities of pluralism. At the Cal Turner Program, she directs the interprofessional student...
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EP 342: Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny, and the Civil Religion of the NFL
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Dr. Lizardy-Hajbi is the author of Unraveling Religious Leadership: Power, Authority, and Decoloniality (Fortress Press, 2024) and co-editor of Explore: Vocational Discovery in Ministry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). In addition, she is the author of a number of articles and reports, including Latino Congregations: Trends from the Faith Communities Today (FACT) and Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) Studies. Read "Songs That Call Me Home to Puerto Rico": Visit: Visit Sacred Writes:
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EP 341: St. Brigid of Ireland w/Dr. Judish L. Bishop
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Judith L. Bishop is Associate Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Alice Andrews Quigley Chair in Women’s Studies at Mills College at Northeastern University. She earned her BA from Baylor University, MA from Vanderbilt University, and her PhD from the Graduate Theological Union. Her research interests include: women in world religions; theoretical approaches to gender, body, and sexuality; and religion in public discourse. Visit Sacred Writes:
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EP 340: Becoming Neighbors w/Amar Peterman
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Amar D. Peterman is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC and the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America. Peterman holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. His writing and research have been featured in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century,The Fetzer Institute, TheBerkley Forum, and The Anxious Bench. He also publishes regularly on his Substack, This Common...
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EP 339: Angela of Foligno and the Lepers of Our Time w/Dr. Mac Loftin
The Classical Ideas Podcast
is a lecturer on theology at Harvard Divinity School. This essay was adapted from his forthcoming book, “” and was produced in partnership with The Narrative Project, an initiative of The Christian Century. Read: View: Visit:
info_outlineDr. Dheepa Sundaram (she/her/hers) is scholar of performance, ritual, yoga, and digital culture in South Asia at the University of Denver which sits on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe people. Her research examines the formation of Hindu virtual religious publics through online platforms, social media, apps, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Dr. Sundaram's current monograph project titled Globalizing Dharma examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a new, digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively "branding" religious identities through a neoliberal "Vedicizing" of virtual spaces. Her most recent article explores how West Bengal’s Tourism initiatives use Instagram to foster virtual, ethnonationalist, social networks during Durga puja. Spotlighting issues of access/accessibility to religious spaces and the viability and visibility of online counter-narratives, especially those from minoritized/marginalized caste, gender, and class communities, Dr. Sundaram shows how Asur tribal groups who seek to recover an alternative history of their ancestor Mahisasura, are not only excluded, but, effaced through this kind of digital cultural marketing campaign. A forthcoming piece examines so-called YouTube yogis and how the commercial landscape of yoga as part of lifestyle "cures" becomes an unwitting partner in Hindu nationalist project of repatriating yoga as a national cultural artifact.
Follow Dr. Dheepa Sundaram on Twitter: https://twitter.com/themodsisyphus
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/