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Ep. 96: Contemplative – and Transformative – Reading, with Stephanie Paulsell, Harvard Divinity School

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
Ep. 96: Contemplative – and Transformative – Reading, with Stephanie Paulsell, Harvard Divinity School
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In Season 3, Matthew Wickman spoke with Stephanie Paulsell, who was Susan Shallcross Swarz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Faculty Dean of Eliot House at Harvard College. Paulsell, author of books on Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison, as well as articles on other literary figures and Biblical texts, …

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Ep. 95: God’s Risk in Creation, with Jane Clark Scharl, Poet

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
Ep. 95: God’s Risk in Creation, with Jane Clark Scharl, Poet
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The concluding poem from Jane Clark Scharl’s 2024 debut collection Ponds addresses the risk God takes in creating a world that can be almost mesmerizingly beautiful – a risk, Scharl writes, that “entices [us] to look / no further than” the world itself, to miss perceiving God through the radiance of what strikes our senses. Scharl is …

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Ep. 94 On Deepening Our Religious Experience: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church, with Abram Van Engen, St. Louis University

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
Ep. 94 On Deepening Our Religious Experience: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church, with Abram Van Engen, St. Louis University
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Abram Van Engen is the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis. He specializes in American literature, and is the author of City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism. We talk with him about his latest book, Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to …

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Season 4 wrap-up: conversation with Faith and Imagination podcast producers Sophia Snyder and Starly Pratt

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
Season 4 wrap-up: conversation with Faith and Imagination podcast producers Sophia Snyder and Starly Pratt
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As is traditional for this podcast, we conclude this season of episodes by reflecting together as a production team on the podcast as a whole, on our extraordinary guests, and on some moments in conversation with these guests that made a particular impression on us.

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“I Was in Prison and You Visited Me,” with Andrew Skotnicki, Manhattan College

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
“I Was in Prison and You Visited Me,” with Andrew Skotnicki, Manhattan College
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Andrew Skotnicki is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College. He has been a devoted minister to people in prison for more than a half century, and we discuss some of the lessons that ministry has taught him, problems he perceives with our system of criminal justice, and the blessings he has received from heeding …

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Healing in a Time of Division, with Vanessa White, Catholic Theological Union

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
Healing in a Time of Division, with Vanessa White, Catholic Theological Union
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Vanessa White is Associate Professor of Spirituality and Ministry, and Director of the Certificate in Black Theology and Ministry, at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She holds a dual appointment at Xavier University of Louisiana’s Institute for Black Catholic Studies. She belongs to several academic societies, among them the National Black Storyteller Association, the American …

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On Suffering, Heaven, and Experiencing a Life Renewed, with Jeffrey Vogel, Hampden-Sydney College

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
On Suffering, Heaven, and Experiencing a Life Renewed, with Jeffrey Vogel, Hampden-Sydney College
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Jeffrey Vogel is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. An expert thinker and writer on topics like divine silence and apophatic theology—or theology of what lies beyond saying—he is also the author of a beautiful new book, All Manner of Things: Meditations on Suffering, Death, and Eternal Life, which we …

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Highlighted Episode: Storytelling as Theology, with guest Christina Bieber Lake, Wheaton College

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
Highlighted Episode: Storytelling as Theology, with guest Christina Bieber Lake, Wheaton College
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This week we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination Podcast. Today’s highlighted guest, Christina Bieber Lake, sees the novel as an expressly theological exercise. Dr. Lake, the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College, is the author of the 2019 book Beyond the Story: American Literary Fiction and the Limits of …

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The Beauty—the Poetry—of Christian Experience, with Benjamin Myers, Oklahoma Baptist University

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
The Beauty—the Poetry—of Christian Experience, with Benjamin Myers, Oklahoma Baptist University
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Benjamin Myers is the Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature and the Director of the Honors Program at Oklahoma Baptist University. A former poet laureate of the state of Oklahoma, Ben is the author of four books of poetry and two books of nonfiction. We discuss two of those books today, a 2020 critical work titled A Poetics …

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Metaphor, Memoir, and Christian Longing and Vision—All from a Midwest Farm, with Tiffany Eberle Kriner, Wheaton College

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Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast
Metaphor, Memoir, and Christian Longing and Vision—All from a Midwest Farm, with Tiffany Eberle Kriner, Wheaton College
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Tiffany Eberle Kriner is associate professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. The author of the scholarly book The Future of the Word: An Eschatology of Reading as well as a number of articles and chapters in academic venues, Kriner is more recently the author of the memoir In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest …