Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast

Jan 27 2025 10 ep. 47 mins 14
Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast artwork

How do we envision our highest ideals and deepest commitments? How do we name and express our most expansive sense of who we are? The Faith and Imagination podcast explores these questions by conversing with scholars and others who address our religious and spiritual lives creatively and insightfully. Sponsored by the BYU Humanities Center.

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Ep. 101: Hopkins’s Poetry and the Hope – and Rhythms – of New Creation, with Devon Abts

Jan 27 2025 51 mins  
Devon Abts is Research and Operations Director for the Clemente Course in the Humanities, an organization whose mission is to provide transformative educational experiences, in the form of free college courses, for adults who face economic hardship and adverse circumstances. We speak with Devon about her work for this organization. But our primary conversation will …

Ep. 100: A Handful of Gems from Our First One Hundred Episodes

Dec 01 2024 41 mins  
On this one hundredth episode of the Faith and Imagination podcast, its host, Matthew Wickman, commemorates some key moments from the early seasons of the podcast that captured what he wanted the podcast to be and gave further shape and direction to what he hoped it would become. We hope you enjoy reflecting back on our conversations …

Ep. 99 A Way of Writing, a Way of Living, with Scott Cairns, poet

Oct 27 2024 49 mins  
Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri. A librettist, essayist, translator, and author of a dozen poetry collections, he has long been a distinguished voice in American religious poetry and an influence on many of the poets we have featured on this podcast. We’re talking today about his latest collection, Correspondence …

Ep. 98: Deep Space, Deep Sea, and the Deep Heart of God, with Laura Reece Hogan, poet

Oct 13 2024 48 mins  
We welcome back to our podcast the award-winning poet and theologian Laura Reece Hogan. Laura is the author of a study of Paul’s theology, I Live, No Longer I: Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy, published in 2017, and of the poetry collections Litany of Flights and Butterfly Nebula. It is that latter collection, published in 2023, we …

Ep. 97: Faith and Wonder, with Steven E. Knepper, Virginia Military Institute

Oct 06 2024 45 mins  
Steven Knepper is Associate Professor of English and Bruce C. Gottwald, Jr. ’81 Chair for Academic Excellence at Virginia Military Institute. A scholar as well as a poet, Steve is the collaborative author of a book on the work of the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, the editor of a volume on the Irish philosopher …

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

Sep 22 2024 43 mins  
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, …

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

Sep 15 2024 58 mins  
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 …

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

Sep 08 2024 42 mins  
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 …

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

Apr 21 2024 44 mins  
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.

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

Apr 14 2024 44 mins  
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 …