Tag: Religion

Podcasts

The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: An Interview

Kelly J. Whitmer’s new book offers a history of science set in the Halle Orphanage, a building that was founded in the middle of the 1690s in the Prussian city of Halle by a group of German Lutherans known as Pietists. Whitmer understands this orphanage as a scientific community, thereby countering a tendency to approach the history of science in a way that treats science and … Continue reading The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Courtly Visions: An Interview

In pre-modern Japan, Ise monogatari (also known as the Ise Stories or Tales of Ise) was considered to be one of the three most important works of literature in the Japanese language. Joshua S. Mostow’s new book focuses on the reception and appropriation of these stories from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries.  Paying special attention to the relationship of image and text in these works, Courtly Visions: The Ise Stories and the Politics of Cultural … Continue reading Courtly Visions: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

How Climate Change Comes to Matter: An Interview

Candis Callison’s timely and fascinating new book considers climate change as a form of life and articulates how journalists, scientists, religious groups, economic collectives, and others shape and influence public engagement around the issue. How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (Duke University Press, 2014) looks carefully at the discourses and practices of five collectives within and through which climate change becomes meaningful: … Continue reading How Climate Change Comes to Matter: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Two Tibetan Studies Readers: An Interview

Two new books have recently been published that will change the way we can study and teach Tibetan studies, and Gray Tuttle and Kurtis Schaeffer were kind enough to talk with me recently about them. The Tibetan History Reader (Columbia University Press, 2013), edited by Tuttle and Schaeffer, is a chronologically-organized set of essays that collectively introduce key topics and themes in Tibetan history from prehistory all the way through the … Continue reading Two Tibetan Studies Readers: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History: An Interview

In his fascinating new book, Rian Thum explores the craft, materiality, nature, and readership of Uyghur history over the past 300 years. The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History (Harvard University Press, 2014) argues that understanding Uyghur history in this way is crucial for understanding both Uyghur identity and continuing relationships with the Chinese state. Rather than writing a narrative of “Xinjiang,” Thum instead crafts his history as a story … Continue reading The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Interview

Janet Gyatso’s new book is a masterfully researched, compellingly written, and gorgeously illustrated history of medicine in early modern Tibet that looks carefully at the relationships between medicine and religion in this context. Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015) looks carefully at the “double movements” of medicine and religion from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries: … Continue reading Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

The Life of the Buddha: An Interview

Kurtis R. Schaeffer’s new translation of Tenzin Chögyel’s The Life of the Buddha (Penguin Books, 2015) is a boon for teachers, researchers, and eager readers alike. Composed in the middle of the eighteenth century, The Life of the Buddha takes the form of twelve major life episodes that collectively provide a “blueprint for an ideal Buddhist life,” as readers follow the Bodhisattva from early pages teaching the gods in … Continue reading The Life of the Buddha: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Visions of Science: An Interview

Jim Secord’s new book is both deeply enlightening and a pleasure to read. Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (University of Chicago Press, 2014) is a fascinating exploration of books and their readers during a moment of intense transformation in British society. Secord brings us into a period of the nineteenth century when transformations in publishing and an expanded reading … Continue reading Visions of Science: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon: An Interview

Matthew Stanley’s wonderful new book introduces James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79) and T.H. Huxley (1825-95) as they embodied theistic and naturalistic science, respectively, in Victorian Britain. Moving well beyond the widespread assumption that modern science and religion are and always have been fundamentally antithetical to one another, Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon offers a history of scientific naturalism that illustrates the deep and fundamental commonalities between positions on the proper practice … Continue reading Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Dealing with Darwin: An Interview

David Livingstone’s new book traces the processes by which communities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that shared the same Scottish Calvinist heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinians in different local contexts. This wonderful book locates evolutionary debates in particular sites and situations as a way of understanding the history of science in terms of “geographies of reading” and “speech spaces,” and you can listen to our … Continue reading Dealing with Darwin: An Interview

Carla Nappi