Project MUSE®: Nova Religio - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Nova Religio.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 22 (2018) through current issue
Latest Articles: Nova ReligioTWOProject MUSE®Nova Religio1541-84801092-6690Latest articles in Nova Religio. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Brainwashing, Race, and New Religious Movements in the United States
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989136
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This special issue of Nova Religio examines the intersection of brainwashing and race with respect to new religious movements in the United States. While rhetoric of “brainwashing” or “mind control” has been central to the conceptualization and study of “cults,” processes of racialization in relation to new religious movements have received less attention, especially for religions that emerged in the 1960s–1980s. Scholars of new religions have yet to examine in depth how the concept of brainwashing has been racialized from its origins to its application against new religions. Much of the anxiety about new religions has focused on racial as much as religious difference from dominant society, namely White Protestant
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallBrainwashing, Race, and New Religious Movements in the United States2026-04-28text/htmlen-USBrainwashing, Race, and New Religious Movements in the United States2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®1134782026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28“Shadow Takes Form”: Brainwashing and Government Religion in the Cold War
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989137
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Try as they might, new religions scholars have not yet wrested popular conceptualizations of new religious movements from the grip of assumptions about “cult brainwashing.” The media trope of brainwashing has become a cultural mainstay, and a seductive one at that—a curious mix of the mysterious and malevolent, fodder for cultural critique of new religious (and political) movements, and a hot selling point for the production of atrocity tales capitalizing on audience fears and fantasies. Scholars of new religious movements attempting to loosen the hold of this popular image of brainwashing have pointed to its evolution from a pseudoscientific theory born of Cold War political fears concerning Chinese Communist
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmall“Shadow Takes Form”: Brainwashing and Government Religion in the Cold War2026-04-28text/htmlen-US“Shadow Takes Form”: Brainwashing and Government Religion in the Cold War2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®1102742026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Brainwashing, Race, and the Unification Church: Orientalism and Yellow Peril Rhetoric from the Cold War to the Cult Wars
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989138
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In a five-part series published in 1975, New York Daily News reporter John Cotter depicted the Unification Church and its founder, Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012), as a menace to America.1 He called Moon a “cult” leader and “self-proclaimed Messiah” who declared, “I will conquer and subjugate the world.” Cotter said “the millionaire Korean evangelist” was “intensely, almost fanatically interested in controlling the political destiny of the United States.” Church members were described as “pawns” who were “subtly programmed” by “the mysterious man,” and “mental zombies” who were “tricked into performing meaningless slave labor” for Moon. Cotter wrote that nearly all members born in the United States were White
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallBrainwashing, Race, and the Unification Church: Orientalism and Yellow Peril Rhetoric from the Cold War to the Cult Wars2026-04-28text/htmlen-USBrainwashing, Race, and the Unification Church: Orientalism and Yellow Peril Rhetoric from the Cold War to the Cult Wars2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®1514262026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Dangerous Minds: Brainwashing Accusations, Affect, and Criminality
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989139
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Psychiatrist Joel E. Dimsdale’s 2021 book, Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media, is his attempt to answer the question that “haunted the twentieth century like a recurring nightmare”: How could someone be “persuaded to believe rubbish and follow it up with self-destructive violence?”1 Dimsdale is hardly the only one plagued by the idea that a seemingly rational person can be somehow forced to “believe rubbish” and act irrationally, nor is he alone in turning to brainwashing as an explanation. Seventy-five years after the American public was first introduced to the notion that one’s brain could be “washed,” the concept still enjoys wide currency. In the years surrounding the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallDangerous Minds: Brainwashing Accusations, Affect, and Criminality2026-04-28text/htmlen-USDangerous Minds: Brainwashing Accusations, Affect, and Criminality2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®1593992026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Idyllic, Exotic, Dangerous: Race, Gender, and the Frontier in News Coverage of Communal Religions
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989140
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Hosting ABC’s 15 July 1988 broadcast of the newsmagazine 20/20, Hugh Downs (1921–2020) leans toward the camera. His demeanor—not to mention his gray hair and deep voice—exudes gravitas. “Tonight,” he begins in his newsreader cadence, “an extraordinary account of a mother’s struggle to save her children from a cult in Thailand.” Downs is friendly yet professional, trustworthy and self-assured, a man you can trust to tell you what is happening in the world, as audiences had been doing for decades, since even before the advent of television, when Downs began his career in radio.1 “Now, you may never have heard of the Children of God,” he continues, “but it’s out there.”2This article focuses on how far “out there” the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallIdyllic, Exotic, Dangerous: Race, Gender, and the Frontier in News Coverage of Communal Religions2026-04-28text/htmlen-USIdyllic, Exotic, Dangerous: Race, Gender, and the Frontier in News Coverage of Communal Religions2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®1178972026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America by Aaron Robertson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989141
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The Black Utopians explores how particular ideas of utopia have evolved since the creation of Black towns like Promised Land, Tennessee, and other towns and communities that served as refuges for Black people in the United States from Post-Reconstruction to the 2010s. These towns and communities were also sometimes referred to as “blacktowns or settlements, Negro or freedom colonies, and freed-men’s villages” (30).Aaron Robertson defines Black utopians as people who have attempted to build their own institutions and protected spaces to address the denial of access to institutional support and equality in the face of racism. They valued protection of Black personhood, a nationalized education system for Black
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallThe Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America by Aaron Robertson (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USThe Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America by Aaron Robertson (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®66392026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake by Judith Weisenfeld (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989142
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Judith Weisenfeld examines White mental health professionals’ use of theories of race and religion to conceptualize the African American psyche in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century United States. She shows that, in mental health institutions in America, African Americans as a group were the most likely to be singled out for having religion or superstition as the cause of their supposed illnesses, which led to the pathologization of Black religions and the further limiting of Black peoples’ freedoms.The book’s chapters are roughly chronological. They track shifts in diagnoses and the roles of race- and religion-making in medical theorization and treatment, and in popular perceptions of African American
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallBlack Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake by Judith Weisenfeld (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USBlack Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake by Judith Weisenfeld (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®67652026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28The Bahá’í Faith and the Black Intelligentsia: Race, Religion, and Nation by Christopher Buck (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989143
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A previously published version had an incorrect quote on page 131. Click hear to view the corrected PDF.The history of African American scholarship is inseparable from the struggle for racial equality. Christopher Buck’s new anthology illuminates the largely unknown role played by the Bahá’í Faith—an independent world religion founded in what was then Persia in 1844, during the height of American slavery—in the philosophies of seminal Black thinkers. Buck focuses on the scholars W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) and Alain Locke (1885–1954), the newspaper publisher Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1870–1940), and the poet Robert Hayden (1913–1980). The latter three were members of the Bahá’í Faith while Du Bois was an admirer
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallThe Bahá’í Faith and the Black Intelligentsia: Race, Religion, and Nation by Christopher Buck (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USThe Bahá’í Faith and the Black Intelligentsia: Race, Religion, and Nation by Christopher Buck (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®73342026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Geographies of Religious Spaces and Sacred Landscapes ed. by Darius Liutikas (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989144
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Geographies of Religious Spaces and Sacred Landscapes is an eclectic volume, with chapters from authors in the fields of human geography, architecture, heritage and tourism studies, theology, sociology, art history, and political science. The overarching theme is the persistence of sacred space through social transformation. Most chapters focus on European sites, although a few range further afield—to Balinese temples, Latter-day Saints temples, Hindu pilgrimage sites, the Mayan legacy in Mérida, Mexico, and the development of a Franciscan “Hermitage of Silence” on a Mexican volcano.The chapters tend to be descriptive, eschewing theory for overviews of various locations, constructions such as sanctuaries and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallGeographies of Religious Spaces and Sacred Landscapes ed. by Darius Liutikas (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USGeographies of Religious Spaces and Sacred Landscapes ed. by Darius Liutikas (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®56842026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28’Pataphysics Unrolled ed. by Katie L. Price and Michael R. Taylor (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989145
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The intellectual status of the ’pataphysics of Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) is contested and also neglected. Jarry was a French eccentric writer, artist, and theatrical puppeteer. Editor Katie Price says of him that he “cultivated a life of profound ridiculousness, a project he approached with utmost seriousness” (1). ’Pataphysics can be ridiculous—it is, after all, the science of imaginary solutions—but it can be serious, inadvertently as well as intentionally. Price notes the 1948 foundation of Le Collège de ’Pataphysique, which boasted artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), author, poet, and editor Raymond Queneau (1903–1976), and playwright Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994) as members; and she observes that it has a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmall’Pataphysics Unrolled ed. by Katie L. Price and Michael R. Taylor (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-US’Pataphysics Unrolled ed. by Katie L. Price and Michael R. Taylor (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®83612026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Mediated Mormons: Shifting Religious Identities in the Digital Age by Rosemary Avance (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989146
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The central issue of Mediated Mormons is the dynamic created in response to—or as a result of—the “Mormon Moment” of 2011. Readers might recall the near coincidence of that year’s opening of the successful Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney (and Jon Huntsman), and perhaps most importantly, the June 2011 cover of Newsweek magazine superimposing the face of Romney onto the authorized poster of the musical. Rosemary Avance, a scholar of media and communications, takes us deeper and explores four important internal conflicts among those identifying with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She not only explores the church’s reaction to the Romney candidacy, but
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallMediated Mormons: Shifting Religious Identities in the Digital Age by Rosemary Avance (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USMediated Mormons: Shifting Religious Identities in the Digital Age by Rosemary Avance (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®65642026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Religion, Media and Conversion in Iran: Mediated Christianity in an Islamic Context by Sara Afshari (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989147
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Sara Afshari’s Religion, Media and Conversion in Iran presents an insightful case study of the role of Christian satellite TV in religious conversion within an Islamic context. There is no question that a portion of foreign media and social networks are striving these days to deconvert the Iranian Muslim-majority populace while also winning converts (such as Christian recruits). This is why, among other reasons, they are commonly perceived in Iran as a tool of the enemies’ “soft war” waged against the nation’s rich Iranian-Islamic culture and civilization.The book moves beyond sensationalism to examine scientifically “the reception of Farsi Christian television channels by Muslim audiences in Iran: their
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallReligion, Media and Conversion in Iran: Mediated Christianity in an Islamic Context by Sara Afshari (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USReligion, Media and Conversion in Iran: Mediated Christianity in an Islamic Context by Sara Afshari (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®80842026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds by Alex K. Gearin (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989148
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As part of the Stanford University Press “Spiritual Phenomena” series, Global Ayahuasca is based upon the ethnographic research of anthropologist Alex K. Gearin who closely examines ayahuasca use in three different contexts—the Indigenous Peruvian Amazon, urban Australia, and corporate China. Gearin’s work contributes to the burgeoning field of psychedelic studies which employs a multidisciplinary intersectional approach. Global Ayahuasca is an important addition to this growing field of scholarship.In chapter 1, Gearin looks closely at the colonial and postcolonial understandings, depictions, and narratives of ayahuasca. We see that the colonial conceptualization of ayahuasca was informed by early cultural
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallGlobal Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds by Alex K. Gearin (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USGlobal Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds by Alex K. Gearin (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®75112026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Shamanism: The Timeless Religion by Manvir Singh (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989149
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Culturally speaking, shamanism is having a moment. Here in Britain, we have seen press sources home in on the rapid rise of self-declared “shamans,” reflecting the growing visibility of a new religious mi-lieu commonly referred to as “Neo-Shamanism” or “modern Western Shamanism.” Major publishers have taken notice and have responded with books seeking to introduce general audiences to shamanism—by which they mean not just this new religious phenomena but a far broader array of spiritual traditions from around the world. The latest in this new batch of publications is Shamanism: The Timeless Religion, in which American anthropologist Manvir Singh packages insights from his own fieldwork alongside information from
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallShamanism: The Timeless Religion by Manvir Singh (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USShamanism: The Timeless Religion by Manvir Singh (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®76732026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Hare Krishna in the Twenty-First Century by Angela R. Burt (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989150
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Following the trend to rethink the “new” in new religious movements, Angela R. Burt’s Hare Krishna in the Twenty-First Century likewise challenges the use of the label “new” as applied to the Hare Krishna movement. As Burt points out, although the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) was founded by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada in the United States in 1966, the Hare Krishna religion itself traces back to sixteenth-century India as part of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition originating in West Bengal. The connection, then, of ISKCON to its past has often been lost on scholars and critics who only see it as a recent movement. In fact, as Burt argues, to identify an older religious tradition as “new”
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallHare Krishna in the Twenty-First Century by Angela R. Burt (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USHare Krishna in the Twenty-First Century by Angela R. Burt (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®68232026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Korean New Religions by Don Baker (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989151
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Don Baker’s Korean New Religions, part of the Cambridge Elements series on New Religious Movements, offers a compact yet incisive overview of Korea’s vibrant and often misunderstood religious landscape. A veteran scholar of Korean religions, Baker brings decades of expertise to this timely volume, which arrives amid renewed global attention to Korean new religions—some of which have made headlines for their political entanglements and controversial practices. To clarify his scope, Baker defines religion as a system that can “explain the otherwise unexplainable . . . predict the otherwise unpredictable . . . and prevent the otherwise unpreventable . . . by relying on immaterial and nonmathematical means,” such as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallKorean New Religions by Don Baker (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USKorean New Religions by Don Baker (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®71412026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Unholy Sensations: A Story of Sex, Scandal, and California’s First Cult Scare by Joshua Paddison (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989152
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When in 2017 a wildfire ripped through the Fountain Grove neighborhood of Santa Rosa, California, it took with it a vintage round barn, the last physical vestige of the Brotherhood of the New Life, a nineteenth-century new religious movement led by the autocratic visionary, Thomas Lake Harris (1823–1906). In Unholy Sensations, Joshua Paddison seeks to resurrect the story of Harris and the Brotherhood in order to argue for its importance as the archetypal “California cult” that would set the template for popular reactions to all such “cults” to follow.Born in England, but raised in upstate New York, Harris followed the familiar trajectory of Universalist minister turned mesmerist and Spiritualist before striking out
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallUnholy Sensations: A Story of Sex, Scandal, and California’s First Cult Scare by Joshua Paddison (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USUnholy Sensations: A Story of Sex, Scandal, and California’s First Cult Scare by Joshua Paddison (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®72242026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28They Know We’re Coming! The True Story of the ATF Undercover Operation at Koresh’s Waco Compound by Robert X. Rodriguez (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989153
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This is a book many of us have been waiting for. Robert X. Rodriguez—or “Gonzalez,” as the Branch Davidians knew him—was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) undercover agent who infiltrated the Mount Carmel Center community outside Waco, Texas. He was also the one who tried to prevent the disastrous outcome of the ATF raid by reporting to his commanders that David Koresh (1959–1993), and the Branch Davidians in general, were informed that the raid was imminent. In what is now a well-known turn of events, his warning was ignored, the decision to proceed with the raid was made, and a deadly shootout ensued on 28 February 1993, resulting in the deaths of four ATF agents, five Branch Davidians, with a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallThey Know We’re Coming! The True Story of the ATF Undercover Operation at Koresh’s Waco Compound by Robert X. Rodriguez (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USThey Know We’re Coming! The True Story of the ATF Undercover Operation at Koresh’s Waco Compound by Robert X. Rodriguez (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®72972026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28They Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989154
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For several decades we have been in the midst of a renaissance of taking religious claims seriously again. Whether that means addressing The Myth of Disenchantment (Storm, 2017) or putting those who talked to the dead (or thought they did) in the spotlight (Braude, Radical Spirits, 1989), scholars have been critically engaging with claims, beliefs, and movements that in other eras might draw only scorn or laughs. Indeed, Nova Religio exists because of this academic renaissance. It is to this body of work that Carlos Eire’s They Flew: A History of the Impossible not only belongs but makes an important contribution.Eire concerns himself largely with Roman Catholic claims of levitation and bilocation—that is, flying
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallThey Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USThey Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®68702026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Wyrd Ecology: Heathen Ritual and Gifting Relations by Barbara Jane Davy (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989155
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Wyrd Ecology comes out of Barbara Jane Davy’s two years as a participant observer in the Heathen communities of Raven’s Knoll and Vindisir in Ontario, Canada. The book frequently returns to the concept of wyrd, or the interconnected web of existence, symbolizing the regenerative capacity of the land and relations with nonhuman others. The first three chapters address one ritual each before interpreting them, the fourth chapter discusses environmental attitudes, and the final chapter brings the rest of the book together.Chapter 1 centers on the ritual of High Sumbel hosted by Raven’s Knoll each July. This ritual includes a shrine to deities, especially the goddess of winter Skaði as she is considered angry that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallWyrd Ecology: Heathen Ritual and Gifting Relations by Barbara Jane Davy (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USWyrd Ecology: Heathen Ritual and Gifting Relations by Barbara Jane Davy (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®68622026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Religious Minorites in Pluralistic Societies: Critical Perspectives on the Accommodation of Religious Diversities ed. by Roberta Medda-Windischer, Kerstin Wonisch and Alexandra Cosima Budabin (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989156
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This impressive collection is Volume 19 in the Studies in Territorial and Cultural Diversity Governance series published by Brill. This series is a treasure trove of information about many aspects of the political, cultural, and legal situation in the European region as well as the Middle East. Some books focus on particular nations, while other studies deal with important issues such as migration and immigration, the environment, rights of minorities and indigenous peoples, and on ways of governance within the broader European region and beyond.The current book is a welcome addition to this series with its concentration on the approaches that European societies seeking to integrate both older and newer minorities
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallReligious Minorites in Pluralistic Societies: Critical Perspectives on the Accommodation of Religious Diversities ed. by Roberta Medda-Windischer, Kerstin Wonisch and Alexandra Cosima Budabin (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USReligious Minorites in Pluralistic Societies: Critical Perspectives on the Accommodation of Religious Diversities ed. by Roberta Medda-Windischer, Kerstin Wonisch and Alexandra Cosima Budabin (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®59962026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Islam and Pseudoscience by Stefano Bigliardi (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989157
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The relationship between Islam and science has been an issue since the nineteenth century, when the relationship between Christianity and science also caused much controversy. In the case of Christianity, the debate now seems to have been largely resolved, though creationism still survives in some parts of the world. In the case of Islam, however, the conflict remains, producing a large amount of what Stefano Bigliardi terms “pseudoscience.” This is found in many guises, covered in this short book, published in the innovative Cambridge University Press Elements series. Islam and Pseudoscience is part of the Elements series on “Islam and the Sciences.” It overlaps with two other volumes in that series: the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallIslam and Pseudoscience by Stefano Bigliardi (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USIslam and Pseudoscience by Stefano Bigliardi (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®63042026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Moved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil by Michael Amoruso (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989158
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Michael Amoruso’s fascinating book takes an ethnographic perspective to examine how human suffering “sustains the relationship between the living and the dead” (xiii) amongst Catholic, Protestant, Spiritist, Umbanda and African-Brazilian religious practitioners in São Paulo, Brazil. Amoruso looks not only at the past for clues to this relationship of healing but also at contemporary issues of racism, white supremacy, and erasure of Black history. Over many years of fieldwork, Amoruso participates in and documents the efforts of devotees to create a memorial to anguished souls in the heart of the city. His conversations with devotees and insights make his study come alive for the reader.A common history of human
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallMoved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil by Michael Amoruso (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USMoved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil by Michael Amoruso (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®69712026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28Let the Dead Speak: Spiritualism in Australia by Andrew Singleton and Matt Tomlinson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989159
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Spiritualism was, as readers of Nova Religio will be well aware, one of the most important new religions of the nineteenth century. Having emerged from the so-called “burned-over district” of New York State in the 1840s, it soon spread rapidly across the United States, proclaiming that spirit mediums possessed the ability to communicate with the deceased. It was not long before news of the movement migrated abroad, with Spiritualist advocates soon popping up elsewhere in the Americas, in Europe, and in Australia.In Let the Dead Speak, it is these latter, Australian Spiritualist communities that come to the fore. In disciplinary terms, the book seeks to examine “the social dynamics of Spiritualism... from combined
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/764/image/coversmallLet the Dead Speak: Spiritualism in Australia by Andrew Singleton and Matt Tomlinson (review)2026-04-28text/htmlen-USLet the Dead Speak: Spiritualism in Australia by Andrew Singleton and Matt Tomlinson (review)2026-04-282026TWOProject MUSE®55712026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-04-28