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 Feminism (Lexington Books, 2024). Her work has been published in Conscience Magazine, Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociological Spectrum. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester Visit Dr. Amanda Hernandez: https://sites.google.com/view/amandadhernandez/ Buy the book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/intersectional-identities-of-christian-women-in-the-united-states-9781666941647/  

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. Ortegren entitled Women in Hindu Traditions (NYU Press) and a monograph about cinematic adaptations of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. She is also co-chair of the American Academy of Religion's Hinduism Unit and on the editorial board for Reading Religion. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester  

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, 2023). His academic work has appeared in Modern Language Studies, Canadian Jewish Studies, Flannery O'Connor Review, Journal of Jewish Identities, and Studies in American Jewish Literature. His public-facing writing has appeared in The Advocate, Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester Follow Dr. Lucas Wilson: https://www.instagram.com/lukeslamdunkwilson/ Buy Shame-Sex Attraction: https://bookshop.org/p/books/shame-sex-attraction-survivors-stories-of-conversion-therapy-lucas-wilson/21360797?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAafHdvzZaNVuiBkf8kq3JdOu8i5UQCVYQZqAkrljmmJjkpO-cLhb2xifbGfyfQ_aem_-PIMbnt_hKHPY2E7FMxa6A

Tazeen M. Ali (she/her) is assistant professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching focus on Islam and gender, US Islam, and race and religion in America. She is the author of The Women's Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (NYU Press, 2022). She has also published in Religion & Politics (now ARC Mag), The Conversation, The Maydan, and Middle East Eye. Ali is currently writing her second book, Muslims on Screen: Racism and Sexuality in Anglo-American Islam, which analyzes entertainment media projects produced by British and American Muslims. She also serves on the advisory board of the National Museum of American Religion. Ali earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University in 2019. Visit Tazeen Ali Visit Classical Ideas Visit Sacred Writes  

Alexiana Fry (she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen at the Faculty of Theology for a project entitled “Divergent Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism.” Her first book, Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible: Speech Act Theory and Trauma Hermeneutics, released in October 2023 with Lexington Press. She received her Ph.D. in Old Testament from Stellenbosch University (ZA) in December 2021. Her dissertation project focused on the intersections of gender, sexuality, migration, and trauma in specific biblical texts, and she continues to explore these constitutive features in both ancient and modern contexts. Visit Alexiana Fry: https://www.alexianafry.com/public-scholarship Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Classical Ideas Linktree: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas

Peach (they/them) is a PhD student at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and the Woolf Institute. They are conducting ethnographic research into the dynamics of resistance and compliance in women's interfaith organisations in the contemporary British public sphere. One of their key interests is how often-dismissed ‘convivial' activities like crafting and food-sharing create conditions for meaningful relationship building in interfaith spaces. Recently they have been puzzling over the interactions between interfaith organising, counter-extremism policy and (anti-)carceral feminisms in the UK. They are funded by the Polonsky-Coexist and Woolf Institute scholarships. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Follow Peach Hoyle: https://bsky.app/profile/peach-hoyle.bsky.social Visit Cambridge Community Kitchen: https://cckitchen.uk/ Visit Classical Ideas: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas  

Dana Lloyd is assistant professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies and affiliated faculty at the Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University. She is the author of Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (University Press of Kansas, 2023) and the co-editor of American Examples: A New Conversation about Religion, vol. 3 (University of Alabama Press, 2024). A scholar of law and religion, Lloyd is now writing about how law and religion construct mothers and motherhood through an interplay between ideas about care and neglect. She is a co-PI for the research project “Critical Perspectives on Care: Social Reproduction Theory in a Global Context.” Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Visit Classical Ideas: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas Visit Critical Perspectives on Care: https://www.cpcsymposium.com/copy-of-speakers-1    

Aisha R. Lovens (she/her/hers) is a PhD student in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric at Christian Theological Seminary. She is a dynamic same-gender-loving minister, scholar-activist, womanist, and preacher committed to transformative theological inquiry. Her research centers on sex rhetoric in Black churches and theological institutions, with a particular emphasis on womanist theology and its liberative possibilities for marginalized communities. Her work seeks to challenge oppressive structures, amplify silenced voices, and foster a more inclusive and embodied understanding of sacred discourse. With a passion for preaching, teaching, and advocacy, she is a visionary leader who brings a depth of insight, intuition, and discernment to her ministry. She is dedicated to empowering communities to engage in critical reflection and bold action and seeks to create spaces for authenticity, healing, and liberation. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Norfolk State University, a Master of Divinity, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Classical Ideas-Sacred Writes seasons 1-8: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas  

Kelsey Hanson Woodruff is a PhD candidate in Religion at Harvard University. Her dissertation is a historical and ethnographic study of digital communities of post-evangelical feminists in the twenty-first century. She is also writing a biography of millennial author Rachel Held Evans. Hanson Woodruff's work has been supported by the Louisville Institute, the SSRC's Religion, Spirituality and Democratic Renewal fellowship, and the Weatherhead Center. Her research and teaching interests include evangelicalism and post-evangelicalism, religion and gender, and religion and American politics. Visit Kelsey Hanson Woodruff online: https://www.kelseyhansonwoodruff.com/ Visit tge 2025 Sacred Writes Carpenter Cohort online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Seasons 1-8 of Sacred Writes/Classical Ideas episodes: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas

Dr Angela Puca is an academic and a university lecturer who has taught at several universities worldwide and has been based at Leeds Trinity University since 2016. She holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in philosophy. In 2021, The University of Leeds awarded her a PhD in Religious Studies on Italian Witchcraft and Shamanism, published by Brill. Her research focuses on magic, witchcraft, Paganism, esotericism, shamanism, and related currents. Author of several peer-reviewed publications and co-editor of the forthcoming ‘Pagan Religions in five Minutes' for Equinox, she hopes to bridge the gap between academia and the communities of magic practitioners by delivering related scholarly content on her YouTube Channel and other social media platforms. CONNECT & SUPPORT

Shaonta' Allen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College. She also holds affiliations with the African and African American Studies Department and the Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality. She received her B.A in Sociology from the University of Washington, her M.A. in Sociology and a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Middle Tennessee State University, and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cincinnati. Her scholarship draws on Race, Religion, Social Movements, and Intersectionality literatures to explore how identity markers like religion inform Black political ideology construction. Shaonta's current book project examines the experiences of Black Christian Millennials during Black Lives Matter. Her research has been published in Sociology Compass, Humanity & Society, and Religions. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024 Visit Dr. Shaonta' Allen: https://linktr.ee/ShaontaTheSociologist

Binu 'Ben' Varghese is a PhD student in religion and society at Princeton Theological Seminary. His research focuses on intersections of race, politics, and religion among Indian diasporas in transnational contexts. He draws his theoretical formulations from the colonial history of Dutch slavery in India and alternative readings of Indian American history and memories. In addition to his research project, Binu is also interested in religion and capitalism, and religious nationalisms in India and America. He is currently serving as the editorial assistant of the Journal of World Christianity. His upcoming research essay is titled “Liminality as Decoloniality: Decolonizing Indian American Christianity,” which will be published in The Routledge Handbook of Politics and Religion in Contemporary America. We also discuss “Indian Flag at the Capitol Insurrection and ANti blackness among Indian Christians” from the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024

SueJeanne Koh is the Graduate Futures Program Director of the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine. She develops programming for humanities doctoral students focusing on professional development and diverse career pathways. She is also the Director of Adult Education and Resident Theologian for St. Mark and New Hope Presbyterian Churches (PC(USA)). In this capacity, she creates opportunities for both churches to collaborate on racial justice and other pressing social issues. She has written articles and book chapters on settler colonialism and theology, Asian American theology, as well as co-written a piece on contingent labor with Franklin Tanner Capps (JAAR). With Capps, she is currently working on a book project on Christian nationalism, informed by blood discourses and legal proceedings significant for Asian American racial formation. Visit Suejeanne Koh: https://x.com/suejeannekoh Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024

Farha Ternikar (Ph.D., Sociology, M.A. Religious Studies) is the director of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at Le Moyne College, Syracuse. Her current manuscript “Faith and Food Networks: Muslim women's acts of resistance and resilience in the American Diaspora” examines how in addition to race and gender, global Islamophobia continues to play an important role in how we can understand the role of food for Muslim communities both in the United States and India. She teaches courses in feminist theory, and race, gender and pop culture. She is the author of Intersectionality and the Muslim South Asian Middle Class: Beyond Hijab and Halal (2021), and several articles including “Beyond Hijab and Modest Fashion”, “Feeding the Muslim South Asian American Family”, and “Hijab and the Abrahamic Traditions”. Her piece “Muslim American Women,” co-authored with Inaash Islam, was recently published in Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures.   Links:  Book: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793649393/Intersectionality-in-the-Muslim-South-Asian-American-Middle-Class-Lifestyle-Consumption-beyond-Halal-and-Hijab Article: https://fisherpub.sjf.edu/gatherings/vol1/iss1/9/ Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024

Robert Monson is a writer, musician, and scholar that looks closely at Black and womanist theologies as well as Black disability theology. His work engages Black religious identities, Christian nationalism, disability, and more. He is currently a PhD student and is a host for two podcasts: Black Coffee and Theology and Three Black Men: Theology, Culture, and the World Around Us. Visit Robert Monson online: https://www.threads.net/@robert_the_contemplative https://musingsfromabrokenheart.substack.com/ Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024

Natalie Avalos is an assistant professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies in the Ethnic Studies department at University of Colorado Boulder. She is an ethnographer of religion whose teaching and research examine Indigenous religious life, land-based ethics, healing historical trauma, and decolonization. She received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a special focus on Native American and Indigenous Religious Traditions and Tibetan Buddhism and is currently working on her manuscript titled Decolonizing Metaphysics: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal, which explores urban Indigenous and Tibetan refugee religious life as decolonial praxis. She is a Chicana of Mexican Indigenous descent, born and raised in the Bay Area. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024 Visit Natalie Avalos: https://natalieavalos.wordpress.com

Emma Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Islam subfield of the Department of Religion at Princeton University. They are also pursuing a graduate certificate from the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Their work focuses on Islam in South Asia along with Islam, Gender, and Sexuality. Their research draws on anthropological fieldwork and social media archives to examine how queer activists in Northern India navigate religion and secularism, especially situated within the context of rising Hindu nationalism. In addition to the dissertation project, Emma's interests include secularism studies, religious racialization and identity, queer and trans studies in religion, and religious nationalisms. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024

Dr. Michael Brandon McCormack is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Pan-African Studies, Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities , and former Director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville. He earned his Ph.D. in Religion in 2013 from Vanderbilt University. His research explores the intersections between Black religion, popular culture, the arts, and activism. His work has been published in Black Theology: An International Journal, the Journal of Africana Religions, the Black Scholar, and the recent volume, Moved By the Spirit: Religion and the Movement for Black Lives. His most recent research focuses on the relationships between religion and discourses of afro-pessimism, afro-futurism, “Black optimism,” and notions of “Black joy” as resistance. Moved By the Spirit: Religion and the Movement for Black Lives https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793647771/Moved-by-the-Spirit-Religion-and-the-Movement-for-Black-Lives Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2024  

Phoebe Farag Mikhail is a Coptic Orthodox Christian and the author of Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church (Paraclete Press). She holds an M.A. in International Education and is a lifelong learner of theology, currently taking courses at Pope Shenouda III Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary in New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, Plough, Christianity Today, and other publications. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023 Visit Phoebe Farag MIkhail: https://beingincommunity.com/

Dr. Strozier is a lecturer at Georgia State University. She is continuing her research in the areas of religion, gender, sexuality, and health focusing the disproportionality of black women's maternal mortality, and women's reproductive decisions, using digital platforms. Her pedagogical focus is anti-racist and decolonial teaching strategies, while shifting humanities curriculum to focus on professional skill development within the gaze of critical skills. Dr. Strozier is dedicated to research and teaching as forms of activism. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023 Visit Dr. Ashlyn Strozier: https://www.instagram.com/gapeach82/

Bhakti Mamtora (Ph.D., Religion, University of Florida) is Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona. Broadly, her research interests include print culture, book history, migration, and transnational religion. Her current book project employs archival, textual, and ethnographic methods to examine the genesis and reception of the Swāmīnī Vāto in the Swaminarayan Sampraday during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published journal articles in Fieldwork in Religion and Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, and entries in Hinduism in Five Minutes and Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024

Samira Mehta is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at CU Boulder. Her research focuses on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the US. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (UNC, 2018) was a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her book of personal essays, The Racism of People Who Love You (Beacon Press, 2023) was called “the epitome of a book meeting a moment” by Oprah's “Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2023.” Mehta's current academic book project, God Bless the Pill: Sexuality and Contraception in Tri-Faith America examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics in the mid-twentieth century. Mehta is the primary investigator for a Luce Foundation funded project, Jews of Color: Histories and Futures. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023 Read Dr. Samira Mehta: https://www.beacon.org/cw_contributorinfo.aspx?ContribID=12658&Name=Samira+K.+Mehta

Sophie Bjork-James (Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements. She is the author of The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family (Rutgers 2021, winner of the Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize) and the co-editor of Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism (2020). She has been interviewed on the NBC Nightly News, NPR's All Things Considered, BBC Radio 4's Today, and in the New York Times. Her work has received support the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Academy of Religion, the National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. Visit Sophie Bjork-James online: https://sophiebjorkjames.com/ Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024

Chauncey Handy is Assistant Professor of Religion at Reed College. As a Chicano scholar of the Hebrew Bible, Chauncey's work focuses on the intersection of race/racialization, theories of ethnicity, Latinx theorization of identity, and the reception history of the Hebrew Bible (for example his Bible, Race, and Empire course at Reed). He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Reed College. He is working on turning his dissertation, Mestizo Poetics of Belonging: Deuteronomy's Construction of Israelite Ethnicity, into a published book. In this project, he considers the nature of ethnicity as presented in the text of Deuteronomy through the lens of Gloria Anzaldúa's articulation of mestizaje (racial-ethnic intermixture). His argument emphasizes the value of socially located approaches to Hebrew Bible and seeks to theorize engagement with religious categories of belonging that advocate for a just society. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023

Vic Thasiah is a professor of religion and a lead faculty member in the environmental studies program at California Lutheran University. He is also the founder and co-president of the nonprofit environmental organization Runners for Public Lands. His research focuses on Chinese nature poetry, Native American perspectives on land and running, and environmental philosophy and activism. He is currently working on a book titled Ground Truth: The Natural World, Outdoor Recreation, and Environmental Activism. Read Drag Sun, Tiger Moon: https://www.irunfar.com/dragon-sun-tiger-moon-fastpacking-the-backbone-trail Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023

Sonja Thomas is an associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Colby College, where she teaches courses on South Asian feminisms, transnational feminisms, gender and human rights, feminist theory, and postcolonial and native feminisms. Sonja is associate editor for South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, and the author of Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India. She has written articles on tap history and blackface abroad (specifically in Asia). She is currently researching and writing her second book on Catholic missionary priests from India serving in rural Montana and North Dakota. The project is titled Indians and Cowboys: Race, Caste, and Indian Missionary Priests in Rural America. She is also conducting research on the 1961 Babe Ruth World Series hosted in her hometown, Glendive, Montana. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023 Read Wondering About the Appearance of the Indian Flag at the Capitol Riots? by Dr. Sonja Thomas Check out Sonja Thomas' book: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295743844/privileged-minorities/

Sarah Dees is a scholar of American and Indigenous religions and assistant professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on the history of the study and representation of Native North American religious traditions, including the relationship between the production of knowledge about religion and policies limiting the free exercise of religion. Her first book manuscript examines the study of Native American religions in the assimilation era by a Smithsonian research agency. She has taught classes on American religions, Native American religions, religion and museums, method and theory in the study of religion, religious freedom and discrimination, and religion and health. She is also interested the intersections of religion, culture, art, and music. You can see what she's up to at www.sarahedees.com. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023

Tamisha A. Tyler (she/her/hers) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, and Theopoetics at Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana. Her research interests include Theopoetics, Theology and the arts, Afrofuturism, Black popular culture, and Science Fiction. Her dissertation, Articulating Sensibilities: Methodologies in Theopoetics in Conversation with Octavia E. Butler, explores Butler's work in the Parable Series as an embodied, artistic, and theopoetic response to the theological, economic, and ecological upheaval in Butler's dystopic world. She is part of the Level Ground artist collective in Los Angeles, CA and her work can be seen in Feminism in Religion's blog, and Fuller Magazine. Her latest project explores religion in the literary world of Octavia Butler. Visit Tamisha Tyler online: https://www.tamishatyler.com/ Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023

Corwin Malcolm Davis is a PhD candidate at Emory University in Person, Community, and Religious Life, and earning a certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Corwin earned a B.A. Degree from Belmont University and a M.Div. from Vanderbilt University Divinity School as the Dean's Scholar. At Emory, Davis has received the George W. Woodruff Fellowship, the Centennial Scholars Fellowship, and externally, fellowships from the Louisville Institute and the Forum for Theological Exploration. His work has also been recognized in scholarship through the receipt of Emory's 2022 Studies in Sexualities Graduate Award, and in public writing through features in literary publications such as Columbia Journal. Visit Corwin Malcolm Davis online: https://corwinmalcolm.com/about Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-fall-2023

This episode discusses the article "3HO's Boarding Schools Were a Living Hell" from Baaz News with the authors Stacie Stukin and Philip Deslippe. Read: https://www.baaznews.org/p/3hos-boarding-schools-abuse-yogi-bhajan?utm_medium=web Visit Stacie Stukin online: https://www.staciestukin.com/ Visit Philip Deslippe online: https://philipdeslippe.com/ Read Stacie Stukin in Los Angeles Magazine: https://lamag.com/featured/yogi-bhajan Read Stukin and Deslippe "How Siri SIngh Sabib Yogi Bhajan Created an Empire": https://www.baaznews.org/p/yogi-bhajan-siri-singh-sahib-expose

Danielle is a poet, painter, teacher, and word-witch. The author of Bones & Honey, The Holy Wild Grimoire, The Sacred Hags Oracle, Seasons of Moon and Flame, Woman Most Wild, and The Holy Wild (published by New World Library), she teaches internationally and has facilitated circles, embodiment trainings, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. Ever grateful to her many teachers, Danielle has most recently studied with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Singing Over the Bones Training, 2019), Bayo Akomolafe (We Will Dance with Mountains, 2022), and John Cantwell and Dr. Karen Ward of Sli An Chroi (2018-2024). She holds a BA in painting from Arcadia University, is the founder of The Hag School, and believes in the emerging power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists in healing our ailing world. She splits her time between the whiskey-soaked streets of a Pennsylvania steel-town and the wilds of upstate New York. Find her praying under pine trees, wandering through the haunted places, and whispering to her grandmothers' ghosts.   https://danielledulsky.com/about/

Rebecca Cooper teaches religion at the middle school level in the suburbs of Washington D.C.

Elyse Ambrose (Ph.D., Religion and Society, Drew University) is a blackqueer ethicist, creative, and educator. Their forthcoming book, A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive (T&T Clark) offers a transreligious and communal-based sexual ethics grounded in blackqueer archive. Ambrose's photo-sonic exhibition, “Spirit in the Dark Body: Black Queer Expressions of the Im/material,” explores black queer and trans spiritualities, identity, and poiesis. Currently Assistant Professor in the Departments for the Study of Religion and of Black Study at the University of California, Riverside, their commentary is featured in the Huffington Post, Vice, BMoreArt, and CBC Radio One's Tapestry podcast. Their research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, Columbia University's Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice, Henry Luce Foundation, and Yale University LGBT Studies Fellowship.

Dr. Sana Patel, (Ph.D., Religious Studies, University of Ottawa) has distinguished herself as a scholar specializing in Digital Islam. She is the recipient of the 2023 Digital Religion Research Award presented by The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies. After completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship focused on systemic Islamophobia in Canada, Sana is keen on exploring how Islamophobia manifests in online spaces and how digital technology shapes global anti-Muslim experiences. Her research interests include studying digital religion, religious diversity, religious authority, religion and immigration, Islamophobia, and nonreligion. Sana's recent publications include: “Religion and Media in Canada” (2021), “Hybrid Imams: Young Muslims and Religious Authority on Social Media” (2021), and “Islamophobia in North America” (2023). Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024    

Nancy A. Khalil is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with an appointment in the Arab and Muslim American Studies Program. Her research broadly focuses on the politics of the idea of American Islam and her forthcoming manuscript is on the profession of the Imam in America. Her academic work has been supported by several foundations, including the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, MSA National, IIIT, and the Islamic Scholarship Fund. She completed her PhD in anthropology at Harvard University, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale's Center on Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration and the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Dr. Khalil previously served on the board of directors for Islamic Relief USA and the Muslim Justice League. Before academia, she was the Muslim Chaplain at Wellesley College. She is committed to serving the American Muslim community as a translator and bridge between academia and public service. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024

Patrick J. D'Silva (Ph.D., Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is a faculty member of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Denver. His current research projects include analyzing the intersection of race, religion, and cultural appropriation in contemporary science fiction, as well as the history of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have engaged with yoga. His previous research examines the circulation of esoteric breathing practices between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia during the early-modern period. He is the co-author (with Carl Ernst) of the forthcoming Breathtaking Revelations: The Science of Breath from the Fifty Kamarupa Verses to Hazrat Inayat Khan. He lives in Boulder, CO with his family. Visit Patrick D'Silva online: https://www.patrickjdsilva.com/ Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024

Charles McCrary (Ph.D., Religion, Florida State University) is an assistant professor of religious studies at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He researches and teaches broadly on American religion, especially topics related to politics, race, secularism, and science. His first book, Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers (University of Chicago Press, 2022), examines the history of “sincerely held religious belief” and how that became a standard for legal understandings of religion in religious freedom cases. He is currently in the early stages of a project about a “crank,” in which he explores how religious, scientific, and political fringes are defined as such. McCrary has written in scholarly journals as well as popular outlets such as The Revealer, Religion & Politics, and The New Republic. Read The Making of a Crass Religious Freedom Celebrity: https://newrepublic.com/article/175783/praying-coach-book-religious-freedom Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024

Rev. Aizaiah G. Yong (Ph.D., Practical Theology, Claremont School of Theology) serves as Assistant Professor of Spirituality at the Claremont School of Theology in Southern California, USA. He is an ordained Pentecostal Christian minister within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a recognized facilitator in the Compassion Practice and an Internal Family Systems Practitioner. Growing up in a multiracial and immigrant family, he is committed to sustaining transformational and collective efforts that address ongoing realities of social oppression with presence, passion, and peace. Multiracial Cosmotheandrism: https://orbisbooks.com/products/working-title-multiracial-cosmotheandrism-a-practical-theology-of-multiraciality-inspired-by-the-life-philosophy-and-mysticism-of-raimon-panikkar-tentative Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/acls-cohort-winter-2024 Spirited Renewal: https://www.spiritedrenewal.org/

In this gripping stand-alone literary thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout. For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaabe people have made the Northern Ontario bush their home in the wake of the power failure that brought about societal collapse. Since then they have survived and thrived the way their ancestors once did, but their natural food resources are dwindling, and the time has come to find a new home. Evan Whitesky volunteers to lead a mission south to explore the possibility of moving back to their original homeland, the “land where the birch trees grow by the big water” in the Great Lakes region. Accompanied by five others, including his daughter Nangohns, an expert archer, Evan begins a journey that will take him to where the Anishinaabe were once settled, near the devastated city of Gibson, a land now being reclaimed by nature. But it isn't just the wilderness that poses a threat: they encounter other survivors. Those who, like the Anishinaabe, live in harmony with the land, and those who use violence.

Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a Black queer preacher, teacher, public administrator, and justice advocate. She is an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and the Government Fellow for Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. In 2021, Rev. Naomi founded Salt | Yeast | Light, an organization that develops spaces of spiritual education, disruption, reflection, transformation, and public action. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023 Visit Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart: https://twitter.com/oholyshift https://www.instagram.com/oholyshift/ https://linktr.ee/heartleaps?fbclid=IwAR0KBxltXNIzvz1JYA_CmaXLj425I-Rn2YZqcjBSu3Ay50yFH5om-fqtrB8  

Maxwell Greenberg (he/they) | (Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Cultural Studies at Goucher College) is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator who researches and teaches about race, religion, gender, and place. He earned his PhD in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from UCLA (2021), before serving as the Friedman Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Washington University in St. Louis (2021-23). He works at the intersection of Jewish, Religious and Indigenous Studies, and is particularly interested in how Judaism and Jewish memory function as unstable tools of statecraft in the US. Greenberg is passionate about building community with a network of scholars, artists and organizers who engage with religion as a connective tool for coalition building with movements to end racism and transmisogyny. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023

Elizabeth Jemison is Associate Professor of Religion at Clemson University where she teaches courses on American religion. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South, published by UNC Press in 2020. Her next book project, tentatively titled, Christian Motherhood: Race and Southern Churchwomen's Organizing during Segregation, examines how women's religious groups across racial lines mobilized to defend Christian motherhood with conflicting results. She has written for Patheos and Religion & Politics. At Clemson, Jemison received the Provost's Outstanding Junior Teacher Award in 2022 and the College of AAH Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2020. She was a Young Scholar in American Religion in the 2015-2017 cohort. Follow Elizabeth Jemison online: https://twitter.com/eljemison Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023

Matthew J. Smith (he/him/his) holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Alma College in mid-central Michigan. He is a transdisciplinary scholar of race, religion, and U.S. empire whose research and teaching also center on gender/sexuality, science & technology, and the environmental humanities. His first book project explores the biopolitics of conversion in U.S. Protestant Missions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, interrogating the missionary discourse of plasticity as a central grammar in the modern scientific production of race. Smith also serves as the Director of the Religious Studies Program at Alma College, teaching a wide range of course offerings on the study of religion as it is lived in people's everyday lives.   Follow Dr. Matthew J. Smith https://twitter.com/smithmj303?lang=en Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023

Lauren Horn Griffin (PhD, University of California Santa Barbara) is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. Her first book, Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England (Brill 2023), showed how confessional debates played a critical role in the development of national identities. Her current project investigates contemporary negotiations of national, religious, and racial identities in Catholic communities online. Adding Catholicism to current conversations about what many are calling white Christian nationalism in the U.S., she shows that while Catholics have long imagined the nation in terms of religious identity, many currently mobilize ideas of Catholic tradition to construct images of a munti-national white Western Civilization. Visit Sacred Writes Online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023

Darius M. Benton, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown, teaching courses in Organizational Communication and Religious Communication. He also serves as the inaugural program director for the MA in Strategic Communication degree. Dr. Benton earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Organizational Leadership from Regent University, his Master of Divinity degree with a certificate in Religious Education from Emory University, and Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication from Norfolk State University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and professional educator with varied experiences from Pre-K through collegiate levels, an ordained minister, executive leader, and social scientist. Dr. Benton's research and publications focus on organizational culture; specifically examining issues of race and gender, religious leadership, and youth serving organizations. Visit Darius Benton online: https://www.dmbenton.com This episode is made possible with support from Sacred Writes. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023  

Darnise C. Martin, PhD is a Professor, Author and Life Transformation Coach with 15 years of training and experiences in helping people create Whole Life Abundance. Dr. Darnise has a life- long passion for helping people tap into their spiritual connections for authentic transformation in the areas of Relationships, Spirituality, Life Purpose and Career, Self-Worth, and Well-Being. Dr. Darnise is a scholar, professor, published author and speaker, with a doctorate in Religious Studies. Dr. Darnise was also featured on Tavis Smiley's radio program on National Public Radio (NPR), and has appeared on KJLH radio in Los Angeles. She has consulted on feature length documentaries such as Dark Girls and Light Girls for the Oprah Winfrey Network. She continues to speak throughout the community offering empowerment and relationship workshops. Dr. Darnise is the author of Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (New York University Press, 2005), coeditor of Women and New and Africana Religions, and the personal development book, 40 Something: 10 Radical Lessons for Women on How To Live and Love Without Losing Themselves. Visit Dr. Darnise at www.drdarnise.com This episode made possible with support from Sacred Writes.  Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-summer-2023

Prea Persaud is a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida and a Visiting Instructor in the Religion Department at Swarthmore College, PA. Her research focuses on Hinduism in the Caribbean and the intersection between race and religion. In her dissertation, “God Must be a Trini: The Transformation of Hinduism into a Caribbean Religion,” she uses Hinduism in Trinidad to challenge studies on diasporic Hinduism that center India as the homeland, scholarship on the Caribbean that ignores the influence of Asian migration, and the rigidness of categories within the study of religion.  She is on the steering committees for the North American Hindu Unit and the Religion in South Asia Unit at the American Academy of Religion and a member of the Intersectional Critical Hindu Studies Group. Her recently publications include several chapters in the edited volume Hinduism in the 5 Minutes edited by Steven Ramey, and “Creolization, Caribbeanness, and Other Categories in the Study of Caribbean Hinduism” in American Examples: New Conversations about Religion edited by Michael Altman.  Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-spring-2023

Eugenia Rainey studies religion as negotiated process. She explores this process at the intersection of Lucumí, an Afro-Cuban religion, (also referred to as La Regla de Ochá or Santería) and medicine. Her work focuses on how the cultural competency paradigm that emerged out of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society influenced the adaptation of Lucumí practice outside of Cuba and racial identity formation in south Florida. Rainey's identity as Cape Verdean and multiracial inform her scholarship on processes of racialization in the United States and Latin America. With her thorough grounding in religious practice, her work highlights devotees' experiences and perceptions of the medical encounter. Through this research she seeks to better understand how the healthcare infrastructure impacts lived religion and how Lucumí in the US accommodates the healthcare needs of devotees as well as the healthcare infrastructure. Her research is supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Reed Foundation, as well as Tulane University and Dartmouth College. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-spring-2023  

Yolanda M. Santiago Correa was born and raised in the archipelago of Puerto Rico as the only child of Miguel and Yolanda. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Religion & Culture at Southern Methodist University. Her academic work and interests focus on Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad, music, and the relationship between racial and religious identity and imagination. Yolanda is a creator and co-host of Majestad Prieta: A Podcast on Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, y la Diáspora and is a team member of the AfroLatiné Theology Project.

Jennifer T. Kaalund (Ph.D., New Testament and Early Christianity, Drew University) is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Her research focuses on Christian Scriptures, contextual Biblical hermeneutics, and African American history, culture, and religion. She is the author of Reading Hebrews and 1 Peter with the African American Great Migration: Diaspora, Place, and Identity (Bloomsbury T&T Clark Press, 2018). She currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Follow Dr. Jennifer Kaalund: https://twitter.com/jkaalund Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-spring-2023

Soumia Bardhan is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Operating at the transdisciplinary intersection of intercultural communication, global communication, and Islamic studies, she explores the complex ways diverse communication practices associated with Islam/Muslims shape MENA (Middle East and North Africa) culture and politics, challenge Islamophobia, facilitate the deliberative capacities of Muslim minority groups, and influence U.S. foreign policy. Her first monograph, on the digital rhetoric of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is under contract with the University of Alabama Press. This book nuances how we understand the rhetoric of Islamism and challenges U.S./Euro-centric narratives of the relationship between (and future of) religion and politics in the MENA region. Soumia was awarded the University of Notre Dame's Global Religion and Research Initiative grant to develop an interdisciplinary course titled “Religion and Communication in the Middle East.” She teaches intercultural/critical intercultural communication; transnational rhetoric; religion, culture, and communication; gender, politics, and Islam; and directs Global Study courses focusing on Islam and intercultural dialogue in Spain, France, Morocco, and India. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/luce-cohort-spring-2023