Please join us on May 15 at noon (AZT) as we welcome Laura Field PhD to discuss her new book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right.
Donald Trump is not a big thinker, but his 2016 presidential victory presented a grand opportunity for people who are, and it set off a radicalization and reconfiguration of the American conservative intellectual world. In Furious Minds, Laura Field chronicles the rise of the New Right—the network of academics, public intellectuals, and influencers who provide ideological fuel to Trumpism, and to Vice President JD Vance. Perhaps above all else, the MAGA New Right is engaged in a vast culture war against modern liberal pluralism. Field will discuss what inspired her to write the book and provide an overview of the ideological radicalization that is shaping contemporary politics in American and around the world.
Laura K. Field is an associate with the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and visiting scholar in residence at American University. A political theorist by training, she holds a PhD in government from the University of Texas at Austin, and has held faculty positions at Rhodes College in Memphis, Georgetown University, and American University in Washington, DC. In addition to her academic work she has written for The New Republic, Politico, The Bulwark, Le Monde, The New York Times and The Atlantic. Her book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right is now out with Princeton University Press. She lives in Washington, DC.
Please join us on April 3 at noon (AZT) as we welcome Eoin Higgins to discuss his new book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.
Eoin Higgins is a journalist based in New England. He is the author of “Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voice on the Left.”
Please join us on March 13 at noon (AZT) as we welcome back Tia Levings to discuss her new book, I Belong to Me: A Survivor’s Guide to Recovery and Hope after Religious Trauma.
Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of religious trauma, evangelical patriarchy, and the Trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and culture.
Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, Newsweek, and the HuffingtonPost. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, hike, paint, and daydream. Find her on social media @TiaLevingsWriter. Her second book, I Belong to Me, releases May 5, 2026.
Join us December 13 at noon AZ time as we welcome Professor Caren Morrison, Professor of Law at the Center for Access to Justice at the University of Georgia. She’ll discuss her research into pregnancy as a modern form of coverture post-Dobbs.
Caren Morrison is a professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law, where she teaches evidence, criminal procedure, law & literature, and women’s legal history. She served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York from 2001 to 2006, where she prosecuted narcotics and organized crime cases, and joined the faculty at GSU in 2009. Her research focuses on police violence, domestic homicide, and the place of women in the common law. Her article, State Abortion Bans: Pregnancy as a New Form of Coverture, was published in the Virginia Law Review Online in December 2022.
From Professor Morrison’s article: “Since Dobbs, some conservative states have made abortion a felony from the moment of conception, threatening doctors with life sentences, all in the name of protecting fetal life. This Essay argues that these bans, rather than protecting life, work to suspend women’s legal existence while they are pregnant. In this way, what these restrictions resemble most is the common law doctrine of coverture.
At common law, coverture meant that a married woman’s legal identity would be “covered” by that of her husband, with the two being deemed one in the eyes of the law—the one being the husband. What is happening now is a new kind of coverture—fetal coverture. But unlike marital coverture, which at least provided some material and legal benefits, fetal coverture just opens up a whole new world of health risks and legal peril. This account explains the absolutism of the new laws, which subsume the legal identity of the woman into that of her fetus.”
Andra Watkins is a survivor of Christian Nationalism; author of the bestselling Substack How Project 2025 Will Ruin YOUR Life; NYT bestselling author of the memoir Not Without My Father: One Woman’s 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace; seen in Newsweek, Salon, Resolute Square and others; and lives between Charleston, South Carolina and San Sebastián, Spain.
Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of the memoir A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of Christian fundamentalism, evangelical patriarchy, and religious trauma, and is quoted in Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, hike, paint, and daydream. Find her on social media @TiaLevingsWriter. Her second book, The Soul of Healing, releases with St. Martin’s Press in 2025.
See more about Tia and A Well-Trained Wife
Join us on July 19 at noon for a conversation with Dr. Lauren Horn Griffin, PhD.
Lauren Horn Griffin is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies and the Department of History at LSU. She is author of Fabricating Founders in Early Modern England (2023), and her upcoming book is titled #Trad: Manufacturing Tradition in an Age of Deep Mediatization. You can find her work on Religion Dispatches, Religion News Service, and The Conversation.
Register here for this virtual event: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pdswQ0PVRj2gvtF4065NfQ
More from Dr. Griffin: https://religiondispatches.org/author/lh_griffin/
Join us on June 14 at noon (PST) for special guest Athena Salman, Arizona Campaign Director for Reproductive Freedom for All. She’ll talk about the current (lack of) reproductive rights in Arizona, the abortion ban, the AZ Abortion Access act and more.
Click here to watch on Secular AZ’s YouTube channel.
Athena Salman came to Reproductive Freedom for All from the Arizona House of Representatives, where she was a fierce advocate for access to reproductive health care, including abortion, since she was first elected in 2016. In 2023, she established the Arizona Repro Table, a coalition of partners in Arizona working together to protect and advance reproductive rights. Athena was honored as a Secular AZ “Secular Star Lawmaker” many times.
Join us on April 5 for special guest Gretchen Sisson, Ph.D., author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood.
Gretchen Sisson, Ph.D., is a qualitative sociologist studying abortion and adoption at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at University of California, San Francisco. Her research was cited in the Supreme Court’s dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and has been covered in The Washington Post, The Nation, All Things Considered and Consider This, New York Magazine, VOX, and other outlets.
More about Dr. Sisson: https://www.gretchensisson.com/
Please join us on March 15 at noon when we’re joined by special guest Professor Kimberly Mutcherson.
Kimberly Mutcherson is a Professor of Law and former Co-Dean at Rutgers Law School in Camden. Professor Mutcherson is a reproductive justice scholar whose work focuses on assisted reproduction and abortion among other topics. Cambridge University Press released her edited volume, Feminist Judgments: Reproductive Justice Rewritten in 2020.
In 2023, Professor Mutcherson received the Trailblazer Award from the New Jersey Women Lawyer’s Association. She was a co-recipient of the 2021 M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award from the Society of American Law Teachers and the 2020 Association of American Law Schools inaugural Impact Award as one of the creators of the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project.
Professor Mutcherson has served as a Scholar in Residence at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU Law School, a Senior Fellow/Sabbatical Visitor at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Prior to entering academia, Professor Mutcherson was a consulting attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights and a Kirkland & Ellis Fellow and Staff Attorney at the HIV Law Project. She received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. from Columbia Law School.
Join us on July 12 at noon for a conversation with Barbara Atwood, Mary Anne Richey Professor of Law Emerita and Co-Director of the Family and Juvenile Law Certificate Program at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, about the Arizona abortion ban case/s and the mifepristone case.
Watch on Secular AZ’s YouTube channel.
Please join us on March 13 at noon (AZT) as we welcome back Tia Levings to discuss her new book, I Belong to Me: A Survivor’s Guide to Recovery and Hope after Religious Trauma.
Join us on March 28 at noon (AZ Time) for special guest Jaclyn Friedman, Founder and Executive Director of EducateUS.
Join us on April 5 for special guest Gretchen Sisson, Ph.D., author of 
