The Religious Studies Project

How will religious festivals continue amid COVID-19 restrictions? How are religious communities around the world adapting to the pressures of 2020's global pandemic? In this September episode of Discourse!, the RSP's Sidney Castillo speaks with guests Maria Nita, Juan Manuel Rubio Arevalo, and Stefanie Butendieck.

In this episode, Breann Fallon talks to Professor J. Lorand Matory about his book "The Fetish Revisited" and his more recent work on white American BDSM as an Afro-Atlantic spiritual practice.

How do material objects accrue spiritual capital? In this episode, Dr. Kathleen Openshaw shares a poignant story from a member of the Australia branch of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. As we hear about the global journey of a vial of anointing oil, she explains how we invest objects with significance and connect them to sacred spaces. Especially for the migrant community of UCKG members in Australia, these connections work to collapse the false binary between stasis and mobility that seems so stark in our present moment.

How does discipline impact the way we see Buddhist ritual? How can more diverse disciplinary conversations help scholars see ritual in new ways? Five scholars from four time zones come together from around the world to discuss the impacts of interdisciplinary approaches to Buddhist ritual.

What is QAnon? In this August 2020 episode of Discourse!, David Robertson, Megan Goodwin, Savannah Finver and Jonathon O'Donnell discuss this conspiracy movement's links to American religious history and contemporary political discourse.

Can discourse analysis help scholars avoid the pitfalls of studying non-religion? In his new book, RSP Co-Founder Christopher R. Cotter argues it can. Speaking with co-host Breann Fallon, this interview highlights the challenges of studying non-religion while celebrating the promise of new methodologies.

What layers of complicity in colonialism are still embedded in the field of religious studies? How can we learn from decades of decolonial work in Native American and Indigenous Studies? Dr. Natalie Avalos speaks with RSP co-host David McConeghy about the urgency of decolonial scholarship to start the RSP's 10th season.

How can the field address its whiteness and the legacy of its colonial origins? In this final episode of our 2019/2020 season Christopher Cotter speaks with Malory Nye about decolonizing Religious Studies.

In this week's episode, John Lardas Modern discusses the genealogy and biopolitics of the scientific study of prayer from E.B. Tylor to DEVO.

Amid mass protests against police brutality and systemic racism ongoing in the United States, RSP contributor Ben Marcus speaks with Andre Willis and Carleigh Beriont about race and religion in this month's Discourse episode.