EP 330: Commodification and Tibetan Buddhism w/Dr. Raj Kumar Singh
Release Date: 08/04/2025
EP 332: Nonbinary Biblical Readings of Mordecai and Beyond w/Dr. Esther Brownsmith
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Esther Brownsmith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Dayton. Her first monograph, Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor (Routledge, 2024), was awarded the AJS Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. She is also editor-in-chief of Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts (Bloomsbury, 2025), and her recent publications examine the book of Esther in the light of fan fiction studies, queer theory, and affect theory. Her research focuses on the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the cultural and...
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EP 331: Radical Antiquity w/Dr. Christopher Zeichmann
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Christopher B. Zeichmann (he/they) is a contract lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, who specializes in the study of the New Testament. His research focuses on a variety of questions related to sexuality, the Roman military, and the early Jesus tradition. His books include Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings (Pluto, 2025), Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum: Their History and Politics (SBL Press, 2022), and The Roman Army and the New Testament (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018). Visit Sacred Writes:
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EP 330: Commodification and Tibetan Buddhism w/Dr. Raj Kumar Singh
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Raj Kumar Singh is a PhD researcher in Anthropology at the University of Delhi, currently studying the relationship between religion and economy in Mcleodganj, Dharamshala. He has published several articles and book chapters on Hindu nationalism, Tibetan Buddhism, and the relationship between Communism, Buddhism, and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Visit Sacred Writes:
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EP 329: Brahma Vidya Mandir Ashram w/Dr. Swasti Bhattacharyya
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Swasti Bhattacharyya (PhD, RN) Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Religion, has been researching, writing, and teaching in religious studies and applied ethics for over two decades. She examines ethical issues from multiple philosophical and religious perspectives. Her work is rooted in her upbringing as a daughter of an immigrant Hindu father from India and a Japanese Buddhist mother born and raised in Hawai’i. She utilized her experiences as a registered nurse and as an applied ethicist in several publications presenting Hindu perspectives on bioethical issues and on cultural humility....
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EP 328: Christian Disaffiliation and Exiting w/Dr. Tess Starman
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Tess Starman (she/they) is a recent PhD graduate in Sociology at Howard University and is an incoming assistant professor at Simpson College. Her research specializes on intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and power at the nexus of religion and politics. She studies progressive Christian attitudes, religious exiting, and religion’s impact on political attitudes and engagement. We discuss her dissertation, entitled, “A Corrupted Faith: The Role of Power in the Process of Christian Disaffiliation and Rise of the Religious Nones,” which examines the religious exiting process and...
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EP327: Religious Shame and Dieting w/Dr. Rebecca Wolfe
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Rebecca Wolfe is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University. Graduating with a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2024, Rebecca’s research agenda focuses on the areas of gender, sexuality, the body, and mental health, particularly in the context of religion. Rebecca’s dissertation work examined bodily experiences of disordered eating and sexual dysfunction among people raised as women in purity culture, a Protestant evangelical movement. Rebecca has been published in academic journals including Health Affairs, Social Science and Medicine -...
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EP 326: Fertility, Abortion, Reproductive Care, and Islam w/Dr. Celene Ibrahim
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Dr. Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar specializing in Qur’anic studies, gender studies and interreligious relations. Her award-winning monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an (Oxford University Press, 2020) received the Association of Middle East Women's Studies book prize and is being translated into multiple languages. She also authored Islam and Monotheism, an accessible primer on Islamic theology (Cambridge University Press 2022), edited One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock 2019), and is featured in the Netflix...
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EP 325: Intersectional Identities of Christian Women in the United States w/Dr. Amanda Hernandez
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Amanda Hernandez is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliate faculty member of the Feminist Studies and Race & Ethnicity Studies programs at Southwestern University. She is a proud graduate of San Antonio Community College. She received her B.A. in Women’s & Gender Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Baylor University. Her work focuses on the ways that white supremacy and sexism show up in U.S. Christian groups. She is the author of Intersectional Identities of Christian Women in the United States: Faith, Race, and...
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EP 324: Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema w/Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai (she/her/hers) is Assistant Professor of Religion, Director of Film and Media Studies, and the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Kalamazoo College. Her research interests include Hindu traditions, epic narratives, Indian cinema, and women in religion. She is the author of Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative(Oxford University Press, 2024) and the co-editor with Nell Shapiro Hawley of Many Mahabharatas(SUNY Press, 2021). Ongoing projects include a co-authored sourcebook with Emilia Bachrach and Jennifer D....
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EP 323: Conversion Therapy & Shame-Sex Attraction w/Dr. Lucas Wilson
The Classical Ideas Podcast
Formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary, Lucas is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga. He is the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives (Rutgers UP, 2025), which received the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. He is also the editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2025), as well as the co-editor of Emerging Trends in Third-Generation Holocaust Literature (Lexington,...
info_outlineRaj Kumar Singh is a PhD researcher in Anthropology at the University of Delhi, currently studying the relationship between religion and economy in Mcleodganj, Dharamshala. He has published several articles and book chapters on Hindu nationalism, Tibetan Buddhism, and the relationship between Communism, Buddhism, and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer