Dr. Amaryah Shaye Armstrong is Assistant professor of Race in American Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech University. Her research combines the fields of Black Studies, American Studies, Political Theology, and Continental Philosophy of Religion in order to explore the relationship between religion and the reproduction of race in the aftermath of the European colonization of the Americas. In our conversation, we talk about  Dr. Armstrong’s academic background and the relationship between concepts of Christian peoplehood, racism, and the language of reproduction. We also discuss the great historian of the black radical tradition Cedric Robinson, the protest movement against antiblackness that erupted across American cities over the last year, and being a worker in the contemporary University under the conditions of  capitalism.

Amaryah Shaye Armstrong

Melissa M. Wilcox specializes in the study of gender, sexuality, and religion in the Global North/Global West. Dr. Wilcox’s books include Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity, and Community; Sexuality and the World’s Religions; Queer Women and Religious Individualism; Religion in Today’s World: Global Issues, Sociological Perspectives; Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody; Queer Religiosities: An Introduction to Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion; and (with Nina Hoel and Liz Wilson) Religion, the Body, and Sexuality. Dr. Wilcox’s current research is on spirituality in leather and BDSM communities.

Melissa Wilcox and Queer Religiosities

Todne Thomas, PhD, is a socio-cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School. In collaboration with Afro-Caribbean and African American congregants, Thomas conducts ethnographic research on the racial, spatial, and familial dynamics of black Christian communities in the U.S. Conceptually, her work integrates critical race and kinship theories to understand the racial and moral scripts of evangelicalism and neoliberalism.

She has authored peer-reviewed articles for the Journal of Africana Religions, Anthropology and Humanism, and the Journal of African American Studies. She has also co-edited New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties across the Abrahamic Religions (2017) with Asiya Malik and Rose Wellman. Her latest book, Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality (2021), explores the internal dynamics of community life among black evangelicals, who are often overshadowed by white evangelicals and the common equation of the “Black Church” with an Afro-Protestant mainline. Drawing on fieldwork in an Afro-Caribbean and African American church association in Atlanta, Thomas locates black evangelicals at the center of their own religious story, presenting their determined spiritual relatedness as a form of insurgency. 

Her current research examines the familial and spiritual experiences of black evangelicals and the neoliberal displacement of black sacred space.

Todne Thomas Podcast

Dr. Sarra Tlilli (ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, ARABIC LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, University of Pennsylvania) discusses her work Islam and the non-human other.

Sarra Tlili

Carol Wayne White, Presidential Professor of Religious Studies, Bucknell University

Carol Wayne White Interview

Dr. Evan Goldstein interviews Dr. Sari Fein, Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, Smith College 

Sari Fein

Kerry Wallach

Emilie Amar-Zifkin

Chumie Juni

Shulamit shinnar

Eli Rosenblatt

Dr. Megan Bryson discusses the relationships between Nazism, Neo-Nazism, and East Asian Religion and Culture

Dr. Megan Bryson "Nazis, Neo-Nazis, and East Asian Religion and Culture"

Dr. David Kline introduces the work of philosopher Sylvia Wynter and connects her work to the humanities within the modern university. This talk was originally given at the Critical Race Symposium: New Perspectives on Research and Scholar Activism hosted by the Critical Race Collective at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville on April 5, 2019.

David Kline "Heretical Humanities: Thinking a New Human Future with Sylvia Wynter"

Dr. Stephen Prothero of Boston University discusses his academic background, interest in American religion, the culture wars, and his work as a public intellectual.

UTKRELIGION

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