We are excited to announce the appointment for our new director for the 2022-2023 academic year, Dr. Isaac Weiner. 

When asked to share a message for the upcoming year, Isaac reports: 

"I am thrilled to serve as new director of the Center for the Study of Religion (CSR) and happy to take this opportunity to introduce myself to the HCC community. I am an associate professor in the department of Comparative Studies. My research explores the implications of religious diversity for American public life. I have particular interests in the intersections of religion and law and in the study of sound. My first book, Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism (NYU, 2014), analyzed the politics of religious pluralism in the United States by attending to disputes about religious sound in the public realm. For the past eight years, I’ve co-directed the American Religious Sounds Project (religioussounds.osu.edu), a collaborative digital initiative, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, to document and interpret the diversity of American religious life by attending to its varied sonic cultures. I’m working on a new project now that looks to the workplace as a critical site of religious expression and legal regulation."

"This is my tenth year teaching at Ohio State, and the CSR has offered a rich intellectual home for me throughout that time. I’ve had the privilege of serving as CSR associate director for the last several years, under the excellent leadership of Hugh Urban and Hannibal Hamlin. As someone with undergraduate and graduate degrees in religious studies, I appreciate how the Center fosters opportunities for connection and collaboration among OSU faculty committed to the academic study of religion as a vibrantly interdisciplinary field. I am also excited about the ways the HCC promises to bring scholars of religion into conversation with those affiliated with the HCC’s other wonderful centers and initiatives." 

"This is an exciting time to re-imagine the place of the CSR and the study of religion at OSU, and I look forward to helping to guide that process over the coming years."

Please help us in welcoming our new director!