Christine L. Cusack, PhD

Commonweal Leveraging Belief Joseph Smith, religious innovator Gerardo Martí September 23, 2025 RELIGION CULTURE BOOKS

My review of John Turner’s excellent new bio (published by Yale) on Mormon founder Joseph Smith www.commonwealmagazine.org/leveraging-b...

How to Save a World: Rachel Carson’s Advice to Posterity “Mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery — not of nature, but of itself.”

How to save a world – Rachel Carson's advice to posterity www.themarginalian.org/2019/04/12/r...

17/100

Really enjoying this new Oxford UP book by one of my Princeton grad school mentors, @rwuth.bsky.social, who is as prolific as ever in retirement. Adept at both history and sociology, he shows how different leaders and groups cultivated happiness as a religious practice. @princetonccsr.bsky.social

"Reframing Women Printmakers" a NEW book from WA looks at historic, global, Indigenous and contemporary hugely talented printmakers!
Have you got your copy yet? 🧡💛🧡
Via www.waterstones.com/book/reframi...
Or any good online or local bookstore in your area or country!

The preliminary program for the #SSSR_RRA2025 Annual Meeting happening October 31-November 2, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is now available. Explore the wide spectrum of topics around this year's theme: Religion Matters.
⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ #Religion #SocialScience
www.sssreligion.org/annual-meeti...

Sculture of a figure sited in a field under a blue sky, the figure is created in rust coloured metal scraps with trails behind it as if representing energy or force

'You Blew Me Away 8' by sculptor Penny Hardy, sculpture made from upcycled scrap metal, to create a piece which signifies renewed life and energy #womensart

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion Click on the title to browse this journal

The SSSR Is Looking for its next Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the @jssreligion.bsky.social, to begin service in January 2026, for a four-year term. Join us in advancing knowledge and public understanding of #Religion. Learn more ⬇️ sssreligion.org/announcement...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1468...

Bryn Mawr College Logo

📣Bryn Mawr College invites applications for a one-year Postdoctoral Fellow for a scholar with expertise in contemporary American religion. The Fellow will partner with President Wendy Cadge and research collaborators nationally. Start date July, 2025. sssreligion.org/announcement...

In sperm whale pods, mothers spent most of their time hunting in deep water where their babies can’t follow. The solution: babysitters!

Carl Safina writes on witnessing sperm whale "mother culture."
orionmagazine.org/article/moth...

Singularity: Marie Howe’s Ode to Stephen Hawking, Our Cosmic Belonging, and the Meaning of Home, in a Stunning Animated Short Film “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Remember?”

Thrilled to hear that poet Marie Howe has just won the Pulitzer. She is not a national, not an international, but an intergalactic treasure, and her poem "Singularity" is one of the greatest poems ever written: www.themarginalian.org/2020/04/23/s...

Forms of Love: Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on the Deeper Significance of Our Political Emotions “We need … to investigate, and to cherish, whatever helps us to see the uneven and often unlovely destiny of human beings in the world with humor, tenderness, and delight, rather than w…

Forms of love – philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who turns 78 today, on the deepest significance of our political emotions

An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I ori…

In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I shared the morning of my fortieth birthday. They are now a book of cards:

A research agenda to improve the lives of autistic people Ari Ne’eman thinks autism research needs a big shake up—but not in the direction Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is proposing.

“They wake up wondering if they are going to get answers that will help empower someone to communicate or live independently or be included in the same classroom or workplace with their peers.”

How Poetry Changes You and Your Brain Emerging research finds that poetry can help us feel happier, healthier, and more connected to each other.

Emerging research finds that poetry can help us feel happier, healthier, and more connected to each other. 📖

The Sequential Rise of Female Religious Leadership Article: The Sequential Rise of Female Religious Leadership | Sociological Science | Posted March 20, 2025

Using data from the 🇨🇭National Congregation Survey, Jeremy Senn & Jörg Stolz "propose that congregations typically first loosen their formal rules governing female access to leadership and only later allow women to occupy leadership positions in practice." sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...

Ping, You’ve Got Whale A new AI system alerts ship captains in real-time when a whale is in their path

“This is WhaleSpotter, an artificial intelligence-powered whale detection system that aims to transmit real-time alerts to ships to prevent them from colliding with whales—a threat that leads to the injury or death of thousands of whales each year.” #Whales

nautil.us/ping-youve-g...

Famous orca mom carries another dead calf around Puget Sound Two newborn calves joined the Northwest's endangered orcas in December. By New Year’s Eve, one of them was dead — and being carried around on its mother’s nose.

Heartbreaking. 💔

www.kuow.org/stories/orca...

Dear emerging, pre-emerging & post-emerging poets, — TL/TH

“Poetry is not a ‘specialised field.’ It has universal & eternal value. It is something that most people start writing when they are children. It is what humans read to each other at weddings & funerals.”

-Brenda Hillman

tlth.co.uk/dearemerging...

Time Bandits: How Christianity Takes Your Time (and What It’s Doing with It) Our new book, Religion Is Not Done With You, came out on Election Day—and what a day it was. We knew the title would be true no matter what happened, but YIKES. And sure enough, religion—specifically ...

"In a country supposedly founded on religious freedom, it matters that our calendars make Christian ways of telling time invisible," write @mpgphd.bsky.social and @profirmf.bsky.social. "Attempts to normalize Christian assumptions as good old American values are cumulative." ow.ly/ntNx50UtxY2

Photo of a woman with long silver hair and smiling, with the greens of trees and mossy rocks in the background.

“What is the gift that I could give you in return for water or berries or birdsong?” —Robin Wall Kimmerer

In this conversation, Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks about embracing a gift economy, and offers a framework for embodying a practical reverence: an ethic of care, reciprocity, and gratitude for the Earth. Listen to “Practical Reverence.”
emergencemagazine.org/interview/pr...

Telling Is Listening: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Magic of Real Human Conversation “Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and…

"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer... feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."

Ursula K. Le Guin on the magic of conversation