Jean Graybeal is a professor at the Gallatin School of Independent Study at New York University. She wrote a chapter called “Cathy on Slenderness, Suffering, and Soul” for God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2001).

Frank Salamone, emeritus professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., has written about African religions and the Krishna Consciousness Movement in Nigeria.

Read a Nov. 21, 2011, article in the New York Times about gratitude and Thanksgiving.

See a Feb. 4, 2012, New York Times story about the increasing number of people living alone.

Lisle Dalton is an assistant professor of religious studies at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. He has written about religion and The Simpsons.

Zaheer Ali is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University researching 20th-century African-American history and religion; he is project manager for Columbia’s Malcolm X Project.

Ali is imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. He is Indonesian.

GodWeb is a Christian website for book and movie reviews run by Presbyterian minister Charles Henderson.

Judith Hauptman is professor of Talmud and Rabbinic culture at Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. She wrote the article “Abortion: Where We Stand” for the journal United Synagogue Review.