The Classical Ideas Podcast

Latest Episodes:

EP201: Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and Gorampa Sonam Senge w/Dr. Constance Kassor Apr 07, 2021

Show notes

Dr. Constance Kassor is an assistant professor of religious studies at Lawrence University, where she teaches courses on Buddhist thought and Asian religious traditions. Her research focuses on Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and she is currently involved in several projects related to the Madhyamaka philosophy of the 15th-century thinker, Gorampa Sonam Senge. She is also interested in religion and comics, women and gender minorities in Buddhism, pedagogy, and digital humanities.

EP200: Early Christian Deathscapes w/Sarah F. Porter Apr 01, 2021

Show notes

Sarah F. Porter (she/her/hers) is a Ph.D candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University with a concentration in New Testament / Early Christianity and a secondary field in archaeology. She holds an M.Div. from Vanderbilt University Divinity School with a certificate in gender, sexuality, and religion, and she earned her B.A. in English and Religion from Southwestern University. Currently, she is a William R. Tyler Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Her dissertation, "Early Christian Deathscapes," examines the production and flow of affects through the martyria, cemeteries, and homilies of fourth-century Antioch (modern-day Antakya, Turkey).

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EP 199: Trafficking Hadassah and Book of Esther w/Dr. Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar Mar 26, 2021

Show notes

Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar (she/her/hers) is an adjunct professor at Spelman College (Atlanta, GA) in the Religious Studies Department. She received her Ph.D. in Biblical Studies (Old Testament) in May 2020 from Drew University. Her dissertation is interdisciplinary and focused on how the discipline of biblical studies is increasingly responsive to social issues, namely, sexual trafficking. Dunbar's dissertation, entitled "Trafficking Hadassah: An Africana Reading of Collective Trauma, Memory, and Identity in the Book of Esther and the African Diaspora," is a dialogical cultural study of sexual trafficking in the book of Esther and during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. She assesses sexual trafficking in both contexts, evaluates the traumatic impact of trafficking on Africana collective identity, and examines and critiques ideologies and stereotypes that were espoused to justify sexual abuse against Africana girls and women.

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EP 198: Protestant Sex Scandals w/Dr. Suzanna Krivulskaya Mar 20, 2021

Show notes

Suzanna Krivulskaya (she/her/hers) is Assistant Professor of History at California State University San Marcos, where she teaches courses in U.S. and digital history. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in modern U.S. history and studies the relationship between sexuality and religion. Her current book project, tentatively titled Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism, investigates how pastoral sex scandals have been covered in the popular press and how Protestant denominations and the reading public responded to the coverage. Her articles have been published by the Journal of American Studies, Current Research in Digital History, and the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Her chapter on fundamentalist sex and sexuality is forthcoming from the Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism. She has published in popular outlets like Religion Dispatchesand Religion in American History, and the Revealer. She is also the recipient of the 2019-2020 LGBTQ Religious History Award from the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network.

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EP 197: We Who Must Die Demand a Miracle and MCC San Francisco w/Dr. Lynne Gerber Mar 14, 2021

Show notes

Dr. Lynne Gerber (she/her/hers) is an independent scholar. She is the author of Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual-Reorientation in Evangelical America (Chicago, 2011). She is currently working on a history of religion and HIV/AIDS in San Francisco.

Read: "FOR CLERGY WHO MINISTERED THROUGH THE AIDS CRISIS COVID IS BOTH EERILY FAMILIAR AND PUZZLINGLY DIFFERENT"

https://religiondispatches.org/for-clergy-who-ministered-through-the-aids-crisis-covid-is-both-eerily-familiar-and-puzzlingly-different/

Listen: Dr. Lynne Gerber on "Sexing History" Podcast: https://www.sexinghistory.com/episode-7/

EP 196: Sacred Sites, Indigenous History, and Spanish Colonialism w/Abel Gomez Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

Abel R. Gómez (he/him/his) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Religion Department and earned a Certificate of Advanced Studies from the Women's and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University. His research focuses on sacred sites, ritual, and decolonization in the context of contemporary Indigenous religions. Abel is currently completing his dissertation, an ethnography of sacred sites protection movements among the Ohlone peoples of the San Francisco and Monterey regions. He is a steering committee member for the Native Traditions in the Americas Unit of the American Academy of Religion and recently served on the committee organizing the annual Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits Powwow in San Francisco. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and religion from San Francisco State University and an M.A. in religious studies from the University of Missouri.

In our conversation, we discuss his dissertation "Sacred Sites, Ceremony, and Belonging in Ohlone Territory: A Case Study of Indigenous Survival," the Spanish colonial history of California, the mission system, Junipero Serra, and the conversions, terror, and trauma of indigenous people in the region.

Read: Statues topple and a Catholic church burns as California reckons with its Spanish colonial past

You can follow Abel on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/jaratura

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EP 195: Black religion, Music, and Friendship w/Ambre Dromgoole Mar 02, 2021

Show notes

Ambre Dromgoole (she/her/hers) is a doctoral candidate in the Departments of Religious Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. She graduated from Oberlin College & Conservatory in 2015 with a B.A. in Musical Studies and Religion, where she received the Jonathon Kneeland Prize for Religion and the Africana Studies Award for Artistic Excellence and Community Service upon graduation. She then obtained an M.A. in Religion from Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music with a concentration in Black Religion and the Arts receiving the Hugh Porter Prize of Distinction. Ambre is interested in the convergence of Black religion and popular culture, focusing on the emergence of various musical genres from women in the Black Holiness-Pentecostal tradition.

Read "What Breonna Taylor and Sister Rosetta Tharpe Taught Me About Black Women and Friendship"

https://therevealer.org/what-breonna-taylor-and-sister-rosetta-tharpe-taught-me-about-black-women-and-friendship/

Follow Ambre Dromgoole on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ambrelynae

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EP 194: Your Life is Meditation w/Mark Van Buren Feb 22, 2021

Show notes

Mark Van Buren is a Mindful Living Trainer, yoga/meditation instructor, personal trainer, and musician, that has been promoting health and wellness for years. He runs workshops and retreats around the New York City and New Jersey regions.

Mark's first book is A Fool's Guide to Actual Happiness and Your Life IS Meditation - Wisdom Publications (which we spoke about on episode 75), and his new book is "Your Life is Meditation," the topic of this conversation. It was fabulous to have Mark back on the show. If you want to find Mark, you can visit him at authormarkvanburen.com