The Classical Ideas Podcast

Latest Episodes:

EP 161: Yoruba Christianity and Music w/Dr. Vicki Brennan May 27, 2020

Show notes

Dr. Vicki Brennan is an anthropologist who studies religion, sound, music, and urban space in Africa and the African Diaspora. She is an Associate Professor of Religion and the Director of African Studies at the University of Vermont. Her research is based on more than fifteen years of field research in southwest Nigeria, primarily in Lagos and Ibadan. She has also conducted research in Nigerian immigrant and African American communities in the United States. Her book, Singing Yoruba Christianity (Indiana UP, 2018), examines how members of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church Movement in Lagos, Nigeria use music, dance, and other media as a means of producing moral community and reinforcing ethical values and modes of self-making. She is currently researching how claims to urban space by members of religious communities in Lagos, Nigeria are produced, circulated, experienced, and contested through sound. She is also writing an ethnographic biography of a Nigerian-American visual artist.

EP 160: Catholic Sex Abuse w/Dr. Brian Clites May 21, 2020

Show notes

Dr. Brian Clites is a professor at Case Western Reserve University. He is an expert in clergy sexual abuse, and he has spent the last eight years interviewing Catholic survivors in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Illinois. In his upcoming book, Surviving Soul Murder, Clites explains how survivors have transformed their pain into legal and political reforms, and how the Catholic scandal has changed the way that other Americans think about sexual assault.

Follow Clites on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/brianclites

Follow Sacred Writes on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sacred_writes

Ep 159: Dr. Tia Noelle Pratt on African-American Catholic Identity, Sex Abuse, and Systemic Racism May 15, 2020

Show notes

Dr. Tia Noelle Pratt is a higher education professional, researcher, and inclusion & diversity specialist based in Philadelphia, PA. She received her PhD in sociology from Fordham University. A sociologist of religion, she is an expert in systemic racism with experience researching and writing about how systemic racism impacts African-American Catholics.

Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/TiaPhD

Follow Sacred Writes on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sacred_Writes

Read "Black Catholics, Racism, and the Sex Abuse Crisis: A Personal Reflection from The Revealer.

Read "There is Time for the church to support black Catholics—if it has the will to do so" from America: The Jesuit Review.

EP 158: Vodun, Voodoo, and the Movies with Emily Crews May 08, 2020

Show notes

Emily Crews is a Ph.D. candidate in History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her dissertation project traces the relationship between movement and identity formation in the context of Nigerian immigration to the United States, exploring the ways in which Pentecostalism conditions, and is conditioned by, the attempts of people to make themselves feel "at home" in a foreign culture. Her teaching interests are broad, but focus mostly on such areas as migration, gender, sexuality, and the body, as well as religions in the African diaspora.

Emily teaches sections of REL 105, "Honors Introduction to the Study of Religion," as well as REL 310 course, "Religion Goes to the Movies."

Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/emilydcrews

EP 157: Seasons of Moon and Flame w/Danielle Dulsky May 01, 2020

Show notes

Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, painter, and word-witch. The author of Woman Most Wild and The Holy Wild., she teaches internationally and has facilitated circles, embodiment trainings, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She 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. As an Irish-American, Danielle's witchcraft is deeply rooted in Celtic philosophy and Irish mythology. She believes fervently in the role of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting white-body supremacy and environmental unconsciousness, is committed to centering the voices and teachings of POC and LGBTQIA+ folks in her work as founder of Living Mandala Yoga, LLC and The Hag School and supports organizations and initiatives that do the same. Parent to two beloved wildlings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art, and intentional sensuousness. Find her praying under pine trees, wandering through the haunted places, and whispering to her grandmothers' ghosts.

Find her online at https://www.danielledulsky.com

EP 156: Witchcraft in the Early Modern Period w/Dr. Julia Gossard Apr 27, 2020

Show notes

Julia M. Gossard is Assistant Professor of History at Utah State University. She specializes in early modern European and Atlantic history with an emphasis on gender, family, and childhood. With funding from the American Historical Association, the Newberry Library, the Society for French Historical Studies, and the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Dr. Gossard wrote her first book, Coercing Children: State-Building and Social Reform in the Early Modern French World, which is under contract with McGill-Queen's University Press. You can find her online at JuliaMGossard.com or on Twitter @JMGossard.

EP 155: Mormon Fundamentalism w/Dr. Cristina Rosetti Apr 18, 2020

Show notes

Dr. Cristina Rosetti completed her Ph.D., in religious studies at the University of California Riverside. She writes about Mormon fundamentalism.

Follow her work on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/CristinaMartaR

EP 154: "The Hungry Ghost" with Dalena Storm Apr 10, 2020

Show notes

Dalena Storm Is a writer and educator. Her undergraduate training at Williams College was in Asian Studies with a Religious Studies Concentration, and her experiences in the study and practice of various religious and spiritual traditions, as well as her travels throughout Asia and Europe, influence much of her writing. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Bennington College, where she participated in a number of workshops that combined the study of fiction and nonfiction. She teaches a Winter Study course at Williams College called "How to Write Auto-Fiction." She is the author of The Hungry Ghost" out from Black Spot Books, an imprint of Vesuvian Media Group. You can find her work on Twitter https://www.twitter.com/DalenaStorm or online at https://www.Dalenastorm.com.

Ep 153: Apocalypse Stories w/ Dr. Kelly J. Baker Apr 02, 2020

Show notes

Dr. Kelly J. Baker is the author of the award-winning Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 (University Press of Kansas, 2011); The Zombies Are Coming!: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture (Bondfire Books, 2013); Grace Period: A Memoir in Pieces (Blue Crow Books, 2017); the award-winning Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia (Blue Crow Books, 2018); and Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness (Blue Crow Books, 2019).

Follow Kelly J. Baker on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/kelly_j_baker

Read "It's the End and Nothing Feels Fine" here: https://killingthebuddha.com/mag/dispatch/its-the-end-and-nothing-feels-fine/

Ep 152: The Clunky Oars (Oran Parker interviews Greg) Apr 01, 2020

Show notes

In this special dual-published episode, Oran Parker of Find the Good News Podcast interviews Classical Ideas host, Greg Soden.

Visit: findthegood.news

Find the Good News on Twitter

Oran Parker on Twitter