Best Stephan Hartmann Podcasts (2025)

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Omneya Ayad, "Love in Sufi Literature: Ibn ‘Ajiba’s Understanding of the Divine Word" (Routledge, 2023) 39:33

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2h ago39:33

39:33

Love in Sufi Literature: Ibn ‘Ajiba’s Understanding of the Divine Word (Routledge, 2023) explores the role of divine love in the Quranic commentary of the Moroccan Sufi scholar Aḥmad Ibn ʿAjība (d. 1224/1809). Through close textual analysis of Ibn ʿAjība’s exegesis al-Baḥr al-madīd—The Abundant Ocean—and drawing on his other Sufi writings the book …

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Candace Lukasik, "Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2025) 54:58

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Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. While once the objects of American missionary efforts, in recent years Copts have been in the spotlight for their Christianity. A spate of ISIS-related bombings and attacks have garnered worldwide atten…

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Mark Somos, Matthew Cleary, Pablo Dufour, Edward Jones Corredera, and Emanuele Salerno, "The Unseen History of International Law" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:05:37

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The Unseen History of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2025) locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine editions of Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis (IBP) published between 1625 and 1650. Meticulously reconstructing the publishing history of these first nine editions and cataloguing copies across hun…

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Isaac Portilla, "Interfaith Dialogue and Mystical Consciousness in India: Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, the Hari-Hara Mystery, and the Hindu-Christian Encounter" (Routledge, 2025) 38:37

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Interfaith Dialogue and Mystical Consciousness in India: Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, the Hari-Hara Mystery, and the Hindu-Christian Encounter (Routledge, 2025) is a research inquiry in interfaith studies that uses hermeneutical phenomenology to address vexing issues arising in the study of mysticism and enlightened sages. This book raises t…

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Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 2:07:54

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A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism. Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daois…

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Gregory N. Evon, "Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Choson Korea (1392-1910)" (Cambria Press, 2023) 1:10:55

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Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) (Cambria Press, 2023) is a fascinating book that sits at the intersection of Buddhist studies and premodern Korean literary history. Gregory N. Evon’s book unfolds in two parts: the first charts the history of the place, position, and status of Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea, charting ho…

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Patrick McCartney, "Authenticity, Legitimacy and the Transglobal Yoga Industry: A Sociological Analysis of Shanti Mandir" (Routledge, 2025) 34:58

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This book is a sociological study of knowledge and knowers and explores the production and perceived value of 'yogic knowledge', how distinction is curated, and how access to this knowledge is gained. The book focuses on the organization Shanti Mandir (SM) in India, a new religious movement, which was founded in 1987 by Swami Nityananda Saraswati. …

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Kathleen Miller, ed., "Doctrine and Disease in the British and Spanish Colonial World" (Penn State UP, 2025) 36:24

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Kathleen Miller talks about her new edited volume, Doctrine and Disease in British and Spanish Colonial World (Penn State University Press, 2025). In the sixteenth century, unprecedented migration caused diseases to take hold in new locales, turning illness and the human body into battlegrounds for competing religious beliefs as well as the colonia…

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Simon Stjernholm, "Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity" (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025) 45:23

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Simon Stjernholm's new book Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity (Bloomsbury Press, 2025) considers specific case studies of embodiment and oratory productions by Muslims in Denmark, Sweden, and Cyprus. In the chapter on approaching God, we learn how rituals such as du‘a (intercessory prayers) or dhikr (remembranc…

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Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025) 53:49

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A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert Garland explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Earl…

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Yonatan Y. Brafman, "Critique of Halakhic Reason: Divine Commandments and Social Normativity" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:05:20

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For centuries, Jewish thinkers have asked two parallel questions. First, what is the reasoning behind an individual commandment and second, why bother heeding a command at all, something Dr. Brafman terms “reasons for” vs “reasons of” the commandments. In his newest book, Critique of Halakhic Reason: Divine Commandments and Social Normativity (Oxfo…

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Sven Trakulhun, "Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2024) 40:54

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Siam had been dealing with Christian missionaries for centuries, but from the 1830s a new wave of Protestant missionaries began to work in Siam, just as the European imperial powers were encroaching on Southeast Asia. They brought with them modern science and technology, which was of interest to the Siamese elite, but at the same time they challeng…

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Maya Mayblin "Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians" (Fordham UP, 2024) 1:23:46

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A richly cinematic and compelling look at priest-politicians in Brazil and their religious and secular entanglements, Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians (Fordham UP, 2024) explores the complex intersection of democracy, patriarchy, and religiosity in Brazil. For over a hundred years, Catholic priests hav…

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Adi Nester, "Unsettling Difference: Music Drama, the Bible, and the Critique of German Jewish Identity" (Cornell UP, 2025) 1:11:50

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Adi Nester is an Assistant Professor of German and Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her first monograph, Unsettling Difference: Bible, Music Drama, and the Critique of German Jewish Identity, appeared with Cornell University Press. The book studies the discourse of Jewish difference in the first half of the twentie…

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Jessica X. Zu, "Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2025) 1:28:02

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Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2025) uncovers a forgotten philosophy of social democracy inspired by Yogācāra, an ancient, nondualistic Buddhist philosophy that claims everything in the perceptible cosmos is mere consciousness and consists of multiple karmically connected yet bounded lifeworld…

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Krista N. Dalton, "How Rabbis Became Experts: Social Circles and Donor Networks in Jewish Late Antiquity" (Princeton UP, 2025) 55:14

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At the turn of the common era, the Jewish communities of Roman Palestine saw the organization of a small group of literate Jewish men who devoted their lives to the interpretation and teaching of their sacred ancestral texts. In How Rabbis Became Experts: Social Circles and Donor Networks in Jewish Late Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2025),…

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Stephen Okey, "A Theology of Conversation: An Introduction to David Tracy" (Liturgical Press, 2018) 1:23:50

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Sometimes described as "a theologian's theologian," David Tracy's scholarship has impacted countless thinkers around the globe. The complexity of his thought, however, has often made engaging his work into a daunting challenge. Combining analysis of the most influential features of Tracy's theology (theological method, the religious classic, public…

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Anne C. Klein on Becoming a Buddha & Being Human too 1:28:47

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You’re human, but are you also a Buddha? If so, which one comes first? What does it mean to be human? What is a Buddha exactly? Is our humanity lost or superseded if we become a Buddha? Such questions might interest our more philosophical listeners. Being Human and a Buddha Too (Wisdom Publications, 2023) by today’s guest Anne Klein explores the 7-…

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David G. Bonagura Jr, "100 Tough Questions for Catholics: Common Obstacles to Faith Today" (Sophia Institute, 2025) 1:07:41

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David Bonagura teaches classical languages and theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York and Catholic International University; he also teaches high school kids. He invited them to ask their questions about the faith, which led to some exciting classroom discussions and David’s new book—100 Tough Questions for Catholics—which we are talking abo…

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Korshi Dosoo and Markéta Preininger, "Papyri Copticae Magicae: Coptic Magical Texts, Volume 1: Formularies" (de Gruyter, 2023) 1:28:50

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Papyri Copticae Magicae: Coptic Magical Texts, Volume 1: Formularies (de Gruyter, 2023) offers an accessible repository of edited Coptic magical texts. The book is a careful and thorough edition and philological study of thirty-seven distinct Coptic manuscripts, covering a wide range of magical applications—from love spells, to curses, to exorcisms…

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Z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi: "The Kabbalistic Tree of Life" and "The Anointed" 24:22

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The late Z'ev Ben Shimon HaLevi (Warren Kenton 1933-2020) wrote The Kabbalistic Tree of Life (KS Books, 2025), a metaphysical scheme based on ancient, medieval and modern views of its principles, which describes the structure and dynamic of cosmic laws that operate throughout the four Worlds of Jacob's Ladder and humanity. HaLevi also wrote The Ano…

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Ryan Klejment-Lavin, "Evil: A North Korean Christian Refugee Perspective" (American Society of Missiology, 2024) 46:02

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The purpose of Evil: A North Korean Christian Refugee Perspective (American Society of Missiology, 2024) is to describe how the North Korean refugee understanding of evil can shape missionary practice in the Korean Peninsula. The central research question guiding this study is, How do North Korean Christian refugees describe evil based on their liv…

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Yosie Levine, "Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate" (Littman Library, 2024) 41:43

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My recent interview with Rabbi Dr. Yosie Levine about his book, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate (Littman Library, 2024), illuminated the dynamic interplay between Sephardi and Ashkenazi traditions-a theme that resonates deeply with our mission at the Unity Through Diversity Institute. From the outset, Rabb…

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Abdul Wohab, "Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence" (Routledge, 2025) 38:42

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Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence (Routledge, 2025) comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam and its relationship with secularism in Bangladesh from pre-British to contemporary times. It focuses on the importance of understanding the dynamics between religion and secularism within specific cultur…

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Abdul Wohab, "Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence" (Routledge, 2025) 38:42

29d ago38:42

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Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence (Routledge, 2025) comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam and its relationship with secularism in Bangladesh from pre-British to contemporary times. It focuses on the importance of understanding the dynamics between religion and secularism within specific cultur…

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Alan Strathern, "Converting Rulers: Global Patterns, 1450-1850" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:21:01

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Why did so many rulers throughout history risk converting to a new religion brought by outsiders? In his award-winning Unearthly Powers (2019), Dr. Alan Strathern set out a theoretical framework for understanding the relation between religion and political authority based on a distinction between two kinds of religion - immanentism and transcendent…

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Gazi Mizanur Rahman, "In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 50:53

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Gazi Mizanur Rahman’s In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community (Cambridge University Press, 2024) offers the first sustained historical study of Bengali migration to British Malaya from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Drawing on archival research in South and Southeast Asia, as well as oral histor…

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Kai Shmushko, "Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China: Modalities, Material Culture, and Politics" (Leiden UP, 2024) 1:04:04

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In the past decades, various forms of Buddhism have emerged in-between, above, and beyond conventional conceptions of religious and spiritual life in China. Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China: Modalities, Material Culture, and Politics (Leiden UP, 2024) is a qualitative study exploring manifestations of the massive revival …

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Marc Katz, "Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 50:56

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Some two thousand years ago, as the story goes, a rabbi named Yochanan makes the epitome of pragmatic gambles—wagering the entire fate of the Jewish people. In dialogue with the soon-to-be Roman emperor Vespasian, Yochanan tacitly acknowledges the Romans’ planned destruction of Jerusalem in return for a plot of land in a town called Yavneh. There, …

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Lines of Control: India’s Foreign Policy and China 39:56

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This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features journalist and analyst Aadil Brar discussing India's foreign policy amidst rising global tensions. The conversation focuses on India’s balancing act between the US, China, and its own strategic autonomy in a contested Indo-Pacific region. Key topics include Ind…

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Aviva Briefel, "Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism" (Cornell UP, 2025) 1:01:06

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Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Aviva Briefel argues that Victorians turned to the dead to understand the material culture of their present. With the rise of spiritualism in Britain in the early 1850s, séances invited participants to contact ghosts using material thi…

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David Kraemer, "Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:00:52

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Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2025) analyzes biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, studies of Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions for a comprehensive history of Jewish responses to and justifications of their diasporas. It shows that Diaspora Jews through the ages in…

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Michael A. Meyer, "Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler" (CCAR Press, 2025) 44:53

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Reform Judaism looks different today than it did a century ago. There are a lot of factors that lead to that change, but among these is Rabbi Alexander Schindler (1925-2000). Doing most of his work in the middle of the 20th century, Schindler was either part of or directly responsible for the changes in Reform (and even American) Judaism that we se…

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Mayukh Sen, "Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star" (Norton, 2025) 57:15

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In 2022, Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. But she wasn’t the first actress of Asian origin to be nominated. In 1935, Merle Oberon was nominated for Best Actress for the role of Kitty Vane in The Dark Angel, only her second film in the U.S. film industry. But no one knew Oberon was Asian. Her pu…

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Pāṇḍitya: Mapping Sanskrit Texts Online 49:25

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Tyler Neill discusses the new platform Pāṇḍitya, an online graph visualization tool illustrating connections between works and authors in the Pandit Prosopographical Database of Indic Texts. It also facilitates exploration of the Sanskrit E-Text Inventory (SETI) as an overlay on the Pandit network. Tyler's blog "Sanskrit and Tech with Tyler" is her…

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Rochelle Rojas, "Bad Christians and Hanging Toads: Witch Crafting in Northern Spain, 1525–1675" (Cornell UP, 2025) 45:09

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Bad Christians and Hanging Toads: Witch Crafting in Northern Spain, 1525–1675 (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Rochelle Rojas tells riveting stories of witchcraft in everyday life in early modern Navarra. Belief in witchcraft not only emerged in moments of mass panic but was woven into the fabric of village life. Some villagers believed witc…

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Marc Shapiro, "Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook" (Littman Library, 2025) 49:51

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Rav Kook’s Vision: Halakhah, Secular Knowledge, and the Renewal of Judaism. Those of us who know something about Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook’s life and philosophy know about his being stuck outside of the Land of Israel during WWI, being the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, and his encouragement of the secular Zionis…

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Elaine Pagels, "Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus" (Doubleday, 2025) 39:53

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Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores the biggest subject of all, Jesus. In Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus (Doubleday, 2025) she sets out to discover how a poor young Jewish …

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Catherine Hartmann, "Making the Invisible Real: Practice of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:07:20

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Dr. Catherine Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Asian Religions in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at University of Wyoming. She received her B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2011, M.A. in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago in 2013, and a Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of R…

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Nancy M. Rourke, "Ecological Moral Character: A Catholic Model" (Georgetown UP, 2024) 39:40

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The images we use to think about moral character are powerful. They inform our understanding of the moral virtues and the ways in which moral character develops. However, this aspect of virtue ethics is rarely discussed. In Ecological Moral Character: A Catholic Model (Georgetown UP, 2024) , Nancy M. Rourke creates an ecological model through which…

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Catherine Hartmann, "Making the Invisible Real: Practice of Seeing in Tibetan Pilgrimage" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:07:20

1M ago1:07:20

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Dr. Catherine Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Asian Religions in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at University of Wyoming. She received her B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2011, M.A. in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago in 2013, and a Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of R…

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Andrew Ollett, "The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō): A Prakrit Work of Poetics" (UniorPress, 2025) 55:18

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The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō) defines and exemplifies 42 figures of speech or “ornaments” in 134 verses. It is the only surviving work of poetics in Prakrit, a literary language closely related to Sanskrit. It is one of the earliest representatives of the larger Indian discourse on poetics, and is especially closely linked to Bhāmaha’s …

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Katherine Stewart, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 57:51

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Today, and for the past several years, many people both here and abroad have been trying to make sense of the radical right and its financial and ideological grip on the Republican party. Why is it that so many Americans have turned against democracy? What explains the authoritarian reaction of so many American citizens, even when that reaction wor…