New Books in Catholic Studies

The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the province, the Jews of Pitigliano, a four hundred-year-old community, were hidden for almost a year by sympathetic farmers in barns and caves. None of those in hiding were arrested and all survived the Fascist hunt for Jews. In the west, near the provincial capital of Grosseto, almost a hundred Italian and foreign Jews were imprisoned in 1943–1944 in the bishop's seminary, which he had rented to the Fascists for that purpose. About half of them, though they had thought that the bishop would protect them, were deported with his knowledge by Fascists and Nazis to Auschwitz. Thus, the Holocaust reached into this provincial corner as it did into all parts of Italy still under Italian Fascist control. Judith Roumani's Jews in Southern Tuscany During the Holocaust (Lexington Books, 2020) is based on new interviews and research in local and national archives.Judith Roumani is founder and director of the Jewish Institute of Pitigliano. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Father Chris talks about his devotion to Our Lady, and what he has learned from St. Maria Faustyna Kowalska, the poor Polish country girl, whose visions of and friendship with Jesus gave us Divine Mercy Sunday. Father Chris calls it the “Extra Credit of Grace.” We also talk about suicide and intercessory prayer and why God choses to work with broken tools. Fr. Chris is Provincial Superior of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception in the United States and Argentina. Father Chris’s page on the Marian Fathers’ website. Father Chris’s video about St. Faustina. St. Faustina’s Diary online (in multiple languages) Father Joe Roesch’s podcast: St. Faustina’s Diary in a year. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kimberly Bird is vice president of external relations of Live Action, an online media advocacy and education organization that works to shift public opinion on abortion and protect the lives of children between conception and birth. I ask her about the most effective ways she has found to change people’s minds, instead of just screaming at each other, or past each other. I also ask her who the women who are getting abortions and why (the answer surprised me), and about the places of agreement across the political spectrum on how we can support them. Live Action website What is Abortion? video series Pro Life Replies video series Can’t Stay Silent video series Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Professor David Tavárez, historian and linguistic anthropologist, is Professor of Anthropology and at Vassar College. He is a specialist in Nahuatl and Zapotec texts, the study of Mesoamerican religions and rituals, Catholic campaigns against idolatry, Indigenous intellectuals, and native Christianities. He is the author or co-author of several books and dozens of articles and chapters.This Dr. Tavárez’s third time on the New Books Network. He spoken twice in 2020 about his earlier work: his 2011 book The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico (from Stanford University Press), and his 2017 edited volume Words & Worlds Turned Around (from UP of Colorado). His new book, published last year (2022, University of Texas Press), is Rethinking Zapotec Time: Cosmology, Ritual, and Resistance in Colonial Mexico builds on his earlier work and is a magisterial and profound discussion of Zapotec ideas of cosmology and time, and how indigenous communities maintained and integrated their pre-Columbian beliefs, the quela li, or true custom, into the Colonial Spanish World and the Catholic Christian Faith.Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of the Early Modern Spanish Empire. His dissertation on diplomacy and travel in the early sixteenth century is a forthcoming book from Brepols Press. He is also the host of the Almost Good Catholics podcast, part of New Books Network Academic Partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Magi: Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate (Fortress Press, 2022) is Eric Vanden Eykel’s second monograph overall and his first geared at a popular, non-scholarly audience. However, even scholars will find much to appreciate and more than a few narrative surprises from this thorough account of the Magi (often translated in English Bibles as “wise men” or “astrologers”), for it succeeds as an excellent recent example of uncompromising, but accessible, public-facing biblical scholarship. The author plumbs beyond basic exegesis of Matthew 2:1–12 to examine apocryphal texts, patristic treatises, and more recent tendential literature demonstrating how, despite palpable political undertones in the evangelist’s intentions to signify Jesus as the rightfully born “King of the Judeans,” the journey of the Magi has served as fertile storytelling fodder for Christians down the centuries, earning them names, royal backstories, sainthood, and perennial reverence for their recognition of Jesus’s nativity. Vanden Eykel joined the New Books Network to discuss all these topics and more from his attempt to unravel the mysteries of the Magi.Eric Vanden Eykel (Ph.D., Marquette University, 2014) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and the Forrest S. Williams Teaching Chair in the Humanities at Ferrum College in Virginia. Dr. Vanden Eykel’s primary area of research is early Christian apocryphal literature, with a special focus on texts and traditions about the infancies and childhoods of Jesus and his mother, Mary. He has previously authored “But Their Faces Were All Looking Up”: Author and Reader in the Protevangelium of James (T&T Clark, 2016) and co-edited Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts (Lexington Books, 2022). In his free time, he enjoys making beer, running, and woodworking.Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, please see his website at https://www.robheaton.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building on the success of Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, this follow up volume dismantles a further 10 widespread stereotypes and clichés about religion, focusing on clichés that a new generation of students are most familiar with. Each chapter includes: A description of a particular cliché; Discussion of where it appears in popular culture or popular media; Discussion of where it appears in scholarly literature; A historical contextualization of its use in the past; An analysis of the social or rhetorical work the cliché accomplishes in the present. Clichés addressed include: "Religion and science naturally conflict", "All religions are against LGBTQ rights", "Eastern religions are more spiritual than Western religions", "Religion is personal and not subject to government regulation", "Religious pluralism gives everyone a voice", etc. Written in an easy and accessible style, Stereotyping Religion II: Critiquing Clichés is suitable for all readers looking to clear away unsophisticated assumptions in preparation for more critical studies.Brad Stoddard is Associate Professor in the History and Art History Department at McDaniel College, Westminster, MD. He researches religion in the United States. He is the author of Spiritual Entrepreneurs: Florida's Faith-Based Prisons and the American Carceral State (2021) and has edited or coedited several books. He is currently researching the topic of entheogens. Craig Martin is Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY. His research interests include method and theory in the study of religion, discourse analysis and ideology critique, and poststructuralism. His books include A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion (2017) and Discourse and Ideology: A Critique of the Study of Culture (2022). He edits a book series with Bloomsbury titled Critiquing Religion: Discourse, Culture, Power.This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eduard Habsburg is Archduke of Austria and Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta. He’s also a husband, a dad, and a regular guy. He talks about Star Wars and Dune, Harry Potter and James Bond. He is probably the first member of the Order of the Golden Fleece to have written the screenplay for a zombie movie. I ask him about his family—both his happy marriage and six children, and also the dynastic history of the House of Habsburg. I also ask him his work as a diplomat working with Victor Orbán and Pope Francis, and his work as a writer, especially about his new book, The Habsburg Way. Eduard Habsburg’s new book, The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times (Sophia Institute Press, 2023) Eduard Habsburg on Twitter: @EduardHabsburg First Things: interview with Mark Bauerlein, “Eduard Habsburg on the Habsburg Way of Life” (April 24, 2023) The New York Times: an article by Jason Horowitz, “Hungary’s Habsburg Ambassador to the Pope, With an Offbeat Résumé” (April 27, 2023) Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Great Schism divided Western Christianity between 1378 and 1417. Two popes and their courts occupied the see of St. Peter, one in Rome, and one in Avignon. Traditionally, this event has received attention from scholars of institutional history. In The Great Western Schism, 1378-1417: Performing Legitimacy, Performing Unity (Cambridge UP, 2022), by contrast, Joëlle Rollo-Koster investigates the event through the prism of social drama. Marshalling liturgical, cultural, artistic, literary and archival evidence, she explores the four phases of the Schism: the breach after the 1378 election, the subsequent division of the Church, redressive actions, and reintegration of the papacy in a single pope. Investigating how popes legitimized their respective positions and the reception of these efforts, Rollo-Koster shows how the Schism influenced political thought, how unity was achieved, and how the two capitals, Rome and Avignon, responded to events. Rollo-Koster's approach humanizes the Schism, enabling us to understand the event as it was experienced by contemporaries.Joëlle Rollo-Koster is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Rhode Island. A scholar of the Avignon papacy, she is the author of Avignon and its Papacy, 1309–1417: Popes, Institutions, and Society and Raiding Saint Peter. In 2016, she was made Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr Lynsey Black is a lecturer in criminology, in the School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University. She researches in the areas of gender and punishment, the death penalty, historical and postcolonial criminology, and borders.In this interview she discusses her new book, Gender and Punishment in Ireland: Women, Murder and the Death Penalty, 1922-64 (Manchester UP, 2022).Gender and Punishment in Ireland explores women's lethal violence in Ireland. Drawing on comprehensive archival research, including government documents, press reporting, the remnants of public opinion and the voices of the women themselves, the book contributes to the burgeoning literature on gender and punishment and women who kill. Engaging with concepts such as ‘double deviance’, chivalry, paternalism and ‘coercive confinement’, the work explores the penal landscape for offending women in postcolonial Ireland, examining in particular the role of the Catholic Church in responses to female deviance. The book is an extensive interdisciplinary treatment of women who kill in Ireland and will be useful to scholars of gender, criminology and history.Aidan Beatty is a historian at the Frederick Honors College of the University of Pittsburgh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Middle Ages is a term coined around 1450 to describe a thousand years of European History. In The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2014), Miri Rubin provides an exploration of the variety, change, dynamism, and sheer complexity that the period covers. From the provinces of the Roman Empire, which became Barbarian kingdoms after c.450-650, to the northern and eastern regions that became increasingly integrated into Europe, Rubin explores the emergence of a truly global system of communication, conquest, and trade by the end of the era. Presenting an insight into the challenges of life in Europe between 500-1500 -- at all levels of society -- Rubin looks at kingship and family, agriculture and trade, groups and individuals. Conveying the variety of European experiences, while providing a sense of the communication, cooperation, and shared values of the pervasive Christian culture, Rubin looks at the legacies they left behind.Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval History at Queen Mary University of London and Head of the School of History. She was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Cambridge. She has taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and has held visiting positions in Paris, Princeton, and New York. Her research has explored areas of the religious cultures of medieval Europe, and has been influenced by an interdisciplinary approach which had benefited from the use of textual, visual and musical sources. She enjoys writing for diverse audiences and discussing history wherever engaged interest arises.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices