Yale Institute of Sacred Music

Visiting ISM Fellow Katie Anania discusses her work as an art historian with ISM student Remi Recchia. Dr. Anania covers her latest monograph in progress, Devour Everything: Feminist Art After Agriculture, explores expressions of feminism in art-making spaces, and highlights her upcoming April 10 ISM conference, “Plant Lives: Sacred Interdependencies in the Arts of the Americas.”

In this episode, Dr. Payam Yousefi discusses with Sindy Yang (MAR ’26) his background as a musical performer and scholar. In particular, he shares how his personal experiences as a musician were deeply embedded in social and political movements in Iran, which served as the impetus for his graduate research. Diving into classical Persian and Sufi poetry, Yousefi shows how music in Iran bears moral, political, and even theological dimensions critical to its understanding. Yousefi also discusses the duality of being a performer-scholar, showing how musical practice and scholarly study are symbiotic with each other.

In this episode, Elliot Canfield-Dafilou talks about his interest in the architectural acoustics of sacred spaces. He begins by recounting his background in musical training and technology, eventually combining the two to find his interdisciplinary home in musical acoustics. With a particular emphasis on sacred spaces, Canfield-Dafilou explores in his research the unique liturgical contexts within which musical acoustics unravels itself.

In this episode, Dr. Suhail Yusuf joins Sindy Yang (MAR ’26) for a conversation about his identity and work as an ethnomusicologist and performing musician. They also dive into discussion about his main instrument, the sarangi, with its rich history and profound cultural connotations.

What can the intricate world of the ovary teach us about overall health? In this episode, we explore the implications of interdisciplinary research and predictive models on drug development with Dr. Hattie Chung, a recently-joined researcher and faculty member at Yale. Dr. Chung studies diverse biological topics through a systems biology lens through which she fosters collaboration and creativity. Come join us and learn about how her research is revolutionizing and driving scientific breakthroughs.

In this episode of the ISM Fellows Podcast, Dr. Peter Boudreau sheds light on time in Byzantium through his work on Byzantine calendar icons. Dr. Boudreau also discusses the complexity of Byzantine time, the relationship between images and text, and the future of studying Byzantium.

In this episode, Dr. Cory Hunter speaks with Sindy Yang (MAR ‘25) about his research on gospel music. They also discuss how his background training in music performance, religion, and theology brings innovation to his methodologies as a scholar. What results is a freshness brought to the discipline of musicology at large, and new ways in which these methodologies and approaches impact the broader scope of interdisciplinary studies of music, religion, and theology.

In this episode of the ISM Fellows Podcast, Dr. Samantha Slaubaugh offers insights into her work on Douceline of Digne as a rare paradigm of liturgical practice among the Beguines of Marseilles. Dr. Slaubaugh also discusses the way in which Douceline of Digne, through her unique practice of liturgy, is situated in her medieval community that reveals the unexpected fragility of her sociopolitical circumstances.

As an ethnographer of art, Dr. Katie Dimmery’s work focuses on the ways in which communities and identities are shaped by artistic ritual in the southwest region of China. Her research attends to the practices of indigenous ritualists and how these practices are situated in regional ethnic and social politics. This conversation traces the history of one particular valley in southwest China and how aesthetics and artistic traditions are being enacted today by the people who live there.

Dr. Ephrem Aboud Ishac discusses his work with ancient Syriac manuscripts, the ways the church and scholarly communities can benefit each other, and the challenges facing the preservation of these ancient texts.