The Classical Ideas Podcast Gregory Soden

Prea Persaud is a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida and a Visiting Instructor in the Religion Department at Swarthmore College, PA. Her research focuses on Hinduism in the Caribbean and the intersection between race and religion. In her dissertation, “God Must be a Trini: The Transformation of Hinduism into a Caribbean Religion,” she uses Hinduism in Trinidad to challenge studies on diasporic Hinduism that center India as the homeland, scholarship on the Caribbean that ignores the influence of Asian migration, and the rigidness of categories within the study of religion.  She is on the steering committees for the North American Hindu Unit and the Religion in South Asia Unit at the American Academy of Religion and a member of the Intersectional Critical Hindu Studies Group. Her recently publications include several chapters in the edited volume Hinduism in the 5 Minutes edited by Steven Ramey, and “Creolization, Caribbeanness, and Other Categories in the Study of Caribbean Hinduism” in American Examples: New Conversations about Religion edited by Michael Altman. 
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Eugenia Rainey studies religion as negotiated process. She explores this process at the intersection of Lucumí, an Afro-Cuban religion, (also referred to as La Regla de Ochá or Santería) and medicine. Her work focuses on how the cultural competency paradigm that emerged out of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society influenced the adaptation of Lucumí practice outside of Cuba and racial identity formation in south Florida. Rainey's identity as Cape Verdean and multiracial inform her scholarship on processes of racialization in the United States and Latin America. With her thorough grounding in religious practice, her work highlights devotees' experiences and perceptions of the medical encounter. Through this research she seeks to better understand how the healthcare infrastructure impacts lived religion and how Lucumí in the US accommodates the healthcare needs of devotees as well as the healthcare infrastructure. Her research is supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Reed Foundation, as well as Tulane University and Dartmouth College.
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Yolanda M. Santiago Correa was born and raised in the archipelago of Puerto Rico as the only child of Miguel and Yolanda. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Religion & Culture at Southern Methodist University. Her academic work and interests focus on Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad, music, and the relationship between racial and religious identity and imagination. Yolanda is a creator and co-host of Majestad Prieta: A Podcast on Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, y la Diáspora and is a team member of the AfroLatiné Theology Project.

Jennifer T. Kaalund (Ph.D., New Testament and Early Christianity, Drew University) is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Her research focuses on Christian Scriptures, contextual Biblical hermeneutics, and African American history, culture, and religion. She is the author of Reading Hebrews and 1 Peter with the African American Great Migration: Diaspora, Place, and Identity (Bloomsbury T&T Clark Press, 2018). She currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
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Soumia Bardhan is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Operating at the transdisciplinary intersection of intercultural communication, global communication, and Islamic studies, she explores the complex ways diverse communication practices associated with Islam/Muslims shape MENA (Middle East and North Africa) culture and politics, challenge Islamophobia, facilitate the deliberative capacities of Muslim minority groups, and influence U.S. foreign policy. Her first monograph, on the digital rhetoric of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is under contract with the University of Alabama Press. This book nuances how we understand the rhetoric of Islamism and challenges U.S./Euro-centric narratives of the relationship between (and future of) religion and politics in the MENA region. Soumia was awarded the University of Notre Dame’s Global Religion and Research Initiative grant to develop an interdisciplinary course titled “Religion and Communication in the Middle East.” She teaches intercultural/critical intercultural communication; transnational rhetoric; religion, culture, and communication; gender, politics, and Islam; and directs Global Study courses focusing on Islam and intercultural dialogue in Spain, France, Morocco, and India.
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Oluwatomisin "Tomi" Oredein is currently an Assistant Professor in Black Religious Traditions and Constructive Theology and Ethics and the Director of Black Church Studies at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, TX. Anchored in her American African identity, her scholastic and creative work engages theopoetics, womanist theology and ethics, postcolonial and decolonial thought, and Black theology from an African diasporic perspective. Tomi is most intrigued by how cultural, social, and religious liminalities can be sites of generative theological and ethical exploration. She has written academic, creative, and ecumenical pieces that foreground questions of care, modes of recognition, and cultural perception from her American African lens. She is the author of the forthcoming book with the University of Notre Dame Press (May 2023), The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice. Her future works include a solo-authored book on a theological ethics of care entitled Making a Human: A Theological Ethic of Care and co-editing a book on theopoetics exclusively featuring racially and ethnically minoritized scholars, entitled In Color: Embodied Approaches in Theopoetics.
Buy The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye here: The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye
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