Azna Parveen is a PhD scholar in Architecture at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores the socio-cultural translations of Islam in the built environment through the perspective of oceanic trade along the Indian Ocean littorals, focussing on Malabar Coast of Kerala, India. Trained in architecture with a specialisation in Urban Design, she has previously worked as an architect and an academician. She was also part of a multidisciplinary team awarded a grant by India Foundation for Art to study the spatial and sensorial landscape of Kayalpattinam. Beyond academia, she is a published illustrator and storyteller, leading heritage walks independently and with organisations (past collaborators include Kochi-Muziris Biennale) to encourage inclusive and interdisciplinary conversations about architectural and urban histories and sustainable futures for heritage. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-august
Deirdre Jonese Austin (she/her) is a writer, womanist minister, and Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer raised in the South and in the Protestant Church. Her work, ministry, and research develop out of her own experience and explore topics at the intersection of faith, race, gender and sexuality, and justice. Jonese has a Master of Divinity degree from Emory University's Candler School of Theology. She is currently a PhD candidate at Duke University in Cultural Anthropology, pursuing certificates in Feminist and African and African American Studies. Her doctoral project explores how Black women dancers in the U.S. South cultivate the sacred in their relationships with their own bodies and sexualities, the divine, and other dancers, at Black churches and at pole-dance and fitness studios. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-august
Jimmy Hoke is a freelance scholar whose uses their research, writing, and teaching to enact genuine change. Their work engages and creates queer, trans, and feminist approaches to the New Testament and Early Christianity. They are the author of Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God?, which reconstructs how queer wo/men engaged with impulses in Paul's letters. They are the Treasurer of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc. and teach courses at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Their current research and writing projects include exploring asexuality in first-century Judaism and Christianity, exploring the intersections of queerness and disability in the gospels, and reexamining the rhetoric of "sluttiness" in Paul's letters. Visit Dr. Jimmy Hoke online: https://www.jimmyhoke.com/ Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer
Samantha Carwyn is a graduate of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, where she earned a Master of Divinity with a concentration in Social Transformation and Church Leadership. Her thesis, Finding Sacred Inherent Worth Despite Adultification & Misogynoir, explores the intersections of gender, race, and the societal expectations placed on Black women. She is currently in care for ordination with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. In her community, Samantha engages in transformative resistance through education, storytelling, and artivism. As a public theologian, she is committed to building bridges between the church, academia, and everyday people to cultivate meaningful conversations. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer Visit Samantha Carwyn: https://carwyncollaboration.com/home/
Dr. Amy Fallas is a PhD in History at UC Santa Barbara. She holds an MA in History from Yale and her research examines religious difference, charitable networks, and historical memory in the Middle East. Her work has been supported by the American Research Center in Egypt, the American Society for Church History, the Orthodox Christian Studies Center among others. She is the Associate Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and serves on the steering committees of the History of Christianity and Middle Eastern Christianity units of the American Academy of Religion. Her scholarship appears in History Compass and Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations and her essays are published in the Washington Post, Jadaliyya, Mada Masr, the Revealer, Sojourners and more. On this episode, we mostly discuss her article Brothers in the Resistance, research in Lebanon about connections between Latin America and the Middle East, titled Hermanos fi al-Muqawama, She is based in Beirut. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Visit Amy Fallas: https://www.amyfallas.com/
Esther Brownsmith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Dayton. Her first monograph, Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor (Routledge, 2024), was awarded the AJS Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. She is also editor-in-chief of Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts (Bloomsbury, 2025), and her recent publications examine the book of Esther in the light of fan fiction studies, queer theory, and affect theory. Her research focuses on the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the cultural and literary norms that make them so resonant. Her latest project applies Sara Ahmed's "feminist killjoy" to the women of the Hebrew Bible, using biblical stories of unhappy women as a model for modern unhappy readers. Follow Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer Follow Esther Brownsmith on Bluesky @brownsmith.bsky.social You can get your copy of Trans Biblical directly from the publisher right here.
Christopher B. Zeichmann (he/they) is a contract lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, who specializes in the study of the New Testament. His research focuses on a variety of questions related to sexuality, the Roman military, and the early Jesus tradition. His books include Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings (Pluto, 2025), Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum: Their History and Politics (SBL Press, 2022), and The Roman Army and the New Testament (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018). Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer
Raj Kumar Singh is a PhD researcher in Anthropology at the University of Delhi, currently studying the relationship between religion and economy in Mcleodganj, Dharamshala. He has published several articles and book chapters on Hindu nationalism, Tibetan Buddhism, and the relationship between Communism, Buddhism, and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer
Swasti Bhattacharyya (PhD, RN) Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Religion, has been researching, writing, and teaching in religious studies and applied ethics for over two decades. She examines ethical issues from multiple philosophical and religious perspectives. Her work is rooted in her upbringing as a daughter of an immigrant Hindu father from India and a Japanese Buddhist mother born and raised in Hawai'i. She utilized her experiences as a registered nurse and as an applied ethicist in several publications presenting Hindu perspectives on bioethical issues and on cultural humility. Her current creative nonfiction project combines her academic expertise with her long-term relationships with the women of the Brahma Vidya Mandir ashram, an intentional, spiritually-focused women's community in rural central India. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester
Tess Starman (she/they) is a recent PhD graduate in Sociology at Howard University and is an incoming assistant professor at Simpson College. Her research specializes on intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and power at the nexus of religion and politics. She studies progressive Christian attitudes, religious exiting, and religion's impact on political attitudes and engagement. We discuss her dissertation, entitled, "A Corrupted Faith: The Role of Power in the Process of Christian Disaffiliation and Rise of the Religious Nones," which examines the religious exiting process and non-religious identity formation of ex-Christians. You can find her work at tessstarman.com. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester
Rebecca Wolfe is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University. Graduating with a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2024, Rebecca's research agenda focuses on the areas of gender, sexuality, the body, and mental health, particularly in the context of religion. Rebecca's dissertation work examined bodily experiences of disordered eating and sexual dysfunction among people raised as women in purity culture, a Protestant evangelical movement. Rebecca has been published in academic journals including Health Affairs, Social Science and Medicine - Population Health, and Theology and Sexuality, and created public facing work on podcasts such as EDGES and Anthrodish, and through the Sage Knowledge video series. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester
Dr. Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar specializing in Qur'anic studies, gender studies and interreligious relations. Her award-winning monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an (Oxford University Press, 2020) received the Association of Middle East Women's Studies book prize and is being translated into multiple languages. She also authored Islam and Monotheism, an accessible primer on Islamic theology (Cambridge University Press 2022), edited One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock 2019), and is featured in the Netflix docudrama Testament: The Story of Moses (2024). Ibrahim holds degrees from Princeton University (AB), Harvard Divinity School (MDiv), and Brandeis University (MA/PHD). She serves as a faculty member at Groton School in Religious Studies and Philosophy. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester Visit Celene Ibrahim: https://www.celeneibrahim.org/
Amanda Hernandez is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliate faculty member of the Feminist Studies and Race & Ethnicity Studies programs at Southwestern University. She is a proud graduate of San Antonio Community College. She received her B.A. in Women's & Gender Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Baylor University. Her work focuses on the ways that white supremacy and sexism show up in U.S. Christian groups. She is the author of Intersectional Identities of Christian Women in the United States: Faith, Race, and Feminism (Lexington Books, 2024). Her work has been published in Conscience Magazine, Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociological Spectrum. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester Visit Dr. Amanda Hernandez: https://sites.google.com/view/amandadhernandez/ Buy the book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/intersectional-identities-of-christian-women-in-the-united-states-9781666941647/
Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai (she/her/hers) is Assistant Professor of Religion, Director of Film and Media Studies, and the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Kalamazoo College. Her research interests include Hindu traditions, epic narratives, Indian cinema, and women in religion. She is the author of Krishna's Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative(Oxford University Press, 2024) and the co-editor with Nell Shapiro Hawley of Many Mahabharatas(SUNY Press, 2021). Ongoing projects include a co-authored sourcebook with Emilia Bachrach and Jennifer D. Ortegren entitled Women in Hindu Traditions (NYU Press) and a monograph about cinematic adaptations of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. She is also co-chair of the American Academy of Religion's Hinduism Unit and on the editorial board for Reading Religion. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester
Formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary, Lucas is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga. He is the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives (Rutgers UP, 2025), which received the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. He is also the editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors' Stories of Conversion Therapy (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2025), as well as the co-editor of Emerging Trends in Third-Generation Holocaust Literature (Lexington, 2023). His academic work has appeared in Modern Language Studies, Canadian Jewish Studies, Flannery O'Connor Review, Journal of Jewish Identities, and Studies in American Jewish Literature. His public-facing writing has appeared in The Advocate, Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-spring-semester Follow Dr. Lucas Wilson: https://www.instagram.com/lukeslamdunkwilson/ Buy Shame-Sex Attraction: https://bookshop.org/p/books/shame-sex-attraction-survivors-stories-of-conversion-therapy-lucas-wilson/21360797?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAafHdvzZaNVuiBkf8kq3JdOu8i5UQCVYQZqAkrljmmJjkpO-cLhb2xifbGfyfQ_aem_-PIMbnt_hKHPY2E7FMxa6A
Tazeen M. Ali (she/her) is assistant professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching focus on Islam and gender, US Islam, and race and religion in America. She is the author of The Women's Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (NYU Press, 2022). She has also published in Religion & Politics (now ARC Mag), The Conversation, The Maydan, and Middle East Eye. Ali is currently writing her second book, Muslims on Screen: Racism and Sexuality in Anglo-American Islam, which analyzes entertainment media projects produced by British and American Muslims. She also serves on the advisory board of the National Museum of American Religion. Ali earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University in 2019. Visit Tazeen Ali Visit Classical Ideas Visit Sacred Writes
Alexiana Fry (she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen at the Faculty of Theology for a project entitled "Divergent Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism." Her first book, Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible: Speech Act Theory and Trauma Hermeneutics, released in October 2023 with Lexington Press. She received her Ph.D. in Old Testament from Stellenbosch University (ZA) in December 2021. Her dissertation project focused on the intersections of gender, sexuality, migration, and trauma in specific biblical texts, and she continues to explore these constitutive features in both ancient and modern contexts. Visit Alexiana Fry: https://www.alexianafry.com/public-scholarship Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Classical Ideas Linktree: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas
Peach (they/them) is a PhD student at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and the Woolf Institute. They are conducting ethnographic research into the dynamics of resistance and compliance in women's interfaith organisations in the contemporary British public sphere. One of their key interests is how often-dismissed 'convivial' activities like crafting and food-sharing create conditions for meaningful relationship building in interfaith spaces. Recently they have been puzzling over the interactions between interfaith organising, counter-extremism policy and (anti-)carceral feminisms in the UK. They are funded by the Polonsky-Coexist and Woolf Institute scholarships. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Follow Peach Hoyle: https://bsky.app/profile/peach-hoyle.bsky.social Visit Cambridge Community Kitchen: https://cckitchen.uk/ Visit Classical Ideas: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas
Dana Lloyd is assistant professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies and affiliated faculty at the Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University. She is the author of Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (University Press of Kansas, 2023) and the co-editor of American Examples: A New Conversation about Religion, vol. 3 (University of Alabama Press, 2024). A scholar of law and religion, Lloyd is now writing about how law and religion construct mothers and motherhood through an interplay between ideas about care and neglect. She is a co-PI for the research project "Critical Perspectives on Care: Social Reproduction Theory in a Global Context." Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Visit Classical Ideas: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas Visit Critical Perspectives on Care: https://www.cpcsymposium.com/copy-of-speakers-1
Aisha R. Lovens (she/her/hers) is a PhD student in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric at Christian Theological Seminary. She is a dynamic same-gender-loving minister, scholar-activist, womanist, and preacher committed to transformative theological inquiry. Her research centers on sex rhetoric in Black churches and theological institutions, with a particular emphasis on womanist theology and its liberative possibilities for marginalized communities. Her work seeks to challenge oppressive structures, amplify silenced voices, and foster a more inclusive and embodied understanding of sacred discourse. With a passion for preaching, teaching, and advocacy, she is a visionary leader who brings a depth of insight, intuition, and discernment to her ministry. She is dedicated to empowering communities to engage in critical reflection and bold action and seeks to create spaces for authenticity, healing, and liberation. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Norfolk State University, a Master of Divinity, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan Classical Ideas-Sacred Writes seasons 1-8: https://linktr.ee/classicalideas
Rachel Bradshaw Clawson
Amazing podcast! Thanks Greg for sharing your experiences with these great guest speakers. Learning a lot!!!