Our Department has been especially busy in recent times, publishing work that reflects our wide gamut of interests. Check out what we have been up to lately! (Most articles/chapters are accessible via Open Access or OSU Library login.)

May 2026

• Arceño, Mark Anthony. "On Being Influenced: Consuming, Producing, and Performing Recipes on Social Media." The Recipes Project special issue, "Modern Personal Recipe Collections."
• Dew, Spencer. "A Clash of Laws: Introduction to the Symposium." Religious Studies Review symposium, "Christian Visions of Law and/beyond the State."
• Dew, Spencer. "Media and Religious Minorities." Religious Minorities Online. 
• Ibrahim, Shurouq. Parray, Tauseef Ahmad. Islam and Democracy in the 21st Century. Book review in Arab Studies Quarterly 48(2).
• Obeid, Noor. "The Mediterranean Seen from Lebanon." Al Markaz Review issue on the Mediterranean. (The prints discussed in Noor's article may be viewed in person on our Comparative Studies Gallery Wall.)

April 2026

• Abdelqader, Thorayah, with Andrew Mitchel. "Flavors of adaptation: Columbus, Ohio, as a stage of interaction for Mediterranean and Mexican restauranteurs." Food, Culture & Society.
• Truong, Van My. "Riding in Cars with Prince." Chapter in Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: The Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince. (Duke)
• Watson, Julia. “What Is a Pandemic Good For? Blurred Days and Live Memories.” Memoir-essay in Writing COVID-19 Lives. (Routledge)

March 2026

• Annus, Epp. "Inter-imperial invisibility and the logic of extractivism: Russian colonialism, its environmental cost, and federative futures in Ukraine and Estonia." Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes.
• Annus, Epp. "Spring Flowers and Border Guards: Estonian Narratives of the Soviet Military and Border Troops." Chapter in Ethnic Relations in the Baltic Reconsidered. (Central European UP)
• Banks, Adam. "From the ‘R’ Word to the ‘S’ Word: Mike Epps’s Comedic Commentary on Subjectivity." Journal of African American Studies.
• Barchiesi, Franco. “Blackness at Revolution’s Narrow Gates.” Political Theology 27(4): 1-8.
• Horn, David. “Graphologics: Handwriting, Character, and Social Danger.” Illegality and theMaking of Italy: Crime Italian Style (Liverpool UP)
• Ibrahim, Shurouq. "Ez-Eldin, Mansoura. The Orchards of Basra, trans. Paul G. Starkey." Book review in Arab Studies Quarterly 48(1).
• Urban, Hugh B. "Teaching New Religious Movements." The Wuhan Journal of Cultic Studies 3(1): 108-12.

February 2026

• Banks, Adam, with Ahura Sultan. “Minor Revolution: From Marxist Hermeneutics to Wayward Theology.” Political Theology.
• Ibrahim, Shurouq. "Navigating Trauma through Arabic Gothic Literature." Ananke Magazine.
• Urban, Hugh B. "Secrecy." Harvard Divinity School Center for World Religions. 

December 2025

• Arceño, Mark Anthony, with Nicholas C. Kawa, Michelle Menkoff, Prabhjot Singh, and Christine D. Sprunger. "A spectrum of climate change adaptation: reactive and proactive responses to extreme weather in annual and perennial cropping systems in Ohio." Environmental Research: Food Systems special issue, "Sustainable Food Systems in a Changing Climate."
• Barry, Rob. “'They Looped. I Looped. The Samples to Feel Free': Renaissance and Modern Ballroom as the Loophole of Retreat in the Afterlife of Slavery.“ Chapter in The Renaissance Reader: Beyoncé and Black Queer Popular Culture. (Routledge)
• Urban, Hugh B. “The Paths of the Serpent: Kuṇḍalinī as Subtle Energy, from Tantra to Neo-Tantra.” Chapter in Subtle Energies in Therapy, Spirituality, Arts, and Politics: 1800–Present. (Brill)
• Watson, Julia, with Sidonie Smith. "Thing, or Not a Thing? Reading for the Autosocial in Life Narrative." Chapter in Autosociobiography: A Literary Phenomenon and Its Global Entanglements. (Brill)

November 2025

• Ibrahim, Shurouq. "Circular Hybridity: Reconciling Identity and Place in Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home." Cultural Practices of Place: A Sense of Placing (Palgrave Macmillan)

October 2025

• Akbarian, Shaida, with P. Khalil Saucier, and Tryon P. Woods. "On the drag of the ship(ped)." Social & Cultural Geography.
• Pérez, Ashley Hope. "A Texas school district banned my book. Now it's coming for ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.'" Houston Chronicle. 
• Urban, Hugh B. “Still Seeking the Magic Mushroom: R. Gordon Wasson and the Complex Origins of Psychedelic Scholarship on Mysticism.” Chapter in Mysticism at the Margins: From the Hip-Hop Underground to the Psychedelic Reformation. (Palgrave MacMillan)

August 2025

• Barchiesi, Franco. “Remains and Rejects: On ‘Political Blackness’.” Book Forum on Apartheid Remains by Sharad Chari, Safundi, 1-6. 

June 2025

• Gil, Liliana. "Becoming a repair entrepreneur: an ethnography of skills training in Brazil." Chapter in The Social Life of Skills in the Global South. (Routledge)
• Urban, Hugh B. “Readings from the Spirits, Dances with the Lord: The ‘Site Visit’ as Embodied Pedagogy and Transformational Classroom.” Chapter in Embodied Pedagogy in the Study of Religion: Transforming the Classroom. (Routledge)
• Watson, Julia. “Foreword: Celebrating the 40th anniversary issue of a/b: An Autobiographical Foreword.” A/b: Auto/Biography Studies 40(2):337-44

May 2025

• Holland, Eugene. "A.D. 1972- A.D. 1980: How Do You Rescue the Market from Capital." Essay in The Deluzian Mind. (Routledge)
• Ibrahim, Shurouq. "The Dissenters by Youssef Rakha." Book review in Arab Studies Quarterly 47(2).
• Webber, Sabra. "Spectacular Dissent: Colin Kaepernick Takes a Knee.” Chapter in Emerging Perspectives in the Study of Folklore and Performance. (Indiana UP)

April 2025

• Brooks, John, with Jonathan Leal. "Joyride." Introduction to a special issue of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies 9(1). (This special issue was also co-edited by John and Jonathan.)
• Pérez, Ashley Hope. "Reading Banned Books Is an Act of Joy." School Library Journal 71(4): 14. 

March 2025

• Barchiesi, Franco. “Antiblackness and the Humanization of Labour.” In Oxford Intersections: Racism by Context. (Oxford UP)
• Pérez, Ashley Hope. Editor of an anthology of banned authors: Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights. (Holiday House)
• Weiner, Isaac. “Workplace.” Chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Religion and American Culture. (Routledge)

January 2025

• Barchiesi, Franco. “African Miracles and Black Damnation: On Economic Thaumaturgy.” Radical History Review 151: 26-34.