The Religion and the Public Conversation project is an initiative begun in 2020. It aims to raise the level of the conversation around issues of religion in public discourse, bringing value to the scholarly community both here at Princeton and at large, and also the greater public. The RPC initiative features a series of public events, two postdoctoral fellows, and a Media Team. These components fit together as the Media Team, under the direction of the fellows, edits the recorded conversations into accessible audio and video media and posted for public and educational use on our website. The production of these materials benefits the Media Team members pedagogically and professionally, and these resources benefit the public by providing accurate, current, and relevant content for discussions around religion today. The postdoctoral fellows also produce their own media products during their fellowships. The finished projects can be viewed in the left hand menu of this page.
Religion and the Public Conversation Events
Kira Schmidt-Stiedenroth's research examines the institutions and practices of Unani medicine, the Graeco-Islamic healing practice based on the humoral theory attributed to Hippocrates and officially recognized as a system of medicine in India. Drawing on diverse materials, including Urdu sources, interviews with practitioners, and observations…
Long before the global popularity of mindfulness and meditation, Buddhism provided cultures around the world with conceptual tools to understand illness as well as a range of therapies and interventions for care of the sick. Today, Buddhist traditions, healers, and…
The Santo Daime is a syncretic religion that arose in the Amazon region of Brazil in the middle of the twentieth century and now has churches throughout the world. Its spiritual practice is based around the sacramental use of ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew consumed only within regular ceremonies. In this conversation, William Barnard—an initiate…
Max Strassfeld is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature, published in 2022 with the University of California Press, and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Trans Talmud places eunuchs…
Jonathan Brown is the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He received his BA in History from Georgetown University in 2000 and his doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2006. Dr. Brown has studied and conducted research in…
Eziaku Nwokocha is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami and the author of Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States. Prof. Nwokocha and Vodou Manbo Maude Evans will be in conversation with CCSR Graduate Student Fellow Mélena Laudig.
In Haitian…
Sarah Imhoff is Professor of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author most recently of The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist, which tells the story of an individual full of contradictions. Jessie Sampter (1883–1938) was best known for her
Religion is a force to be reckoned with in political debates over sex, but Janet Jakobsen decisively breaks with the common sense that religion and sex are the fixed binary of American political life. She instead follows the kaleidoscopic ways in which sexual politics are embedded in social relations of all kinds – not only the intimate…
LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant is Professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina, where she serves as the Director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Director for Black Culture and History. She will be in conversation with Princeton University Graduate Student Ariyanne Colston.
Whether investigating…