for AmCon: I spent last weekend at the Gay Christian Network Conference in Houston, and I needed something to read on the plane. Something short, punchy, an in-flight entertainment that could keep my attention after an event that is equal parts spiritually uplifting and emotionally harrowing. I threw Sarah Schulman’s Rat Bohemia into my bag and grinned as I set my alarm for 1995. More fool me. Rat Bohemia is in some ways the scathing nostalgia trip I was hoping... Read more
Hey y’all. I am back from the Gay Christian Network’s 2016 conference. It was a great experience; I met a ton of people, got a lot out of both of the keynote speakers I saw (Broderick Greer & Misty Irons), and went to some excellent workshops e.g. one on the challenges faced by gay students at Christian campuses. Here’s my post on GCN 2015. Hoping to see many of you all in Pittsburgh next year! I also led one workshop.... Read more
lays it down: I’ve been having lots of weird, really vibrant dreams (I usually don’t dream or don’t remember my dreams or they’re really dull.) The latest was that I was going to make a birth pilgrimage where I would be walking in silence across country to the place where I would give birth. My face was going to be veiled because in the dream women’s faces become plasticized and cartoonish during pregnancy. I was walking with a woman who... Read more
I have finally finished my epic rewatch of “Star Trek: The Original Series.” (Previous posts here, here.) The final stretch was defined by my discovery that lots of supposedly terrible episodes are either genuinely good, or better than I’d remembered. There is one exception. That exception is, of course, Spock’s Brain. Let’s do this thing. Bread and Circuses, infamous for supposedly pushing Christianity with Uhura’s final line, “Not the sun in the sky, Mr. Spock–the Son of God!”, is genuinely... Read more
for AmCon: I’ve finally heard “Hamilton,” the Broadway hip-hop musical about the first Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and I can say: It’s a brilliant, empathetic example of a genre I don’t believe in. more Read more
I’m super breaking my supposed rule that I won’t link to the Marshall Project here because you should be following them on Twitter. You should be following them on Twitter! And you can donate to their work here. Anyway, check out their “Next Year in Criminal Justice“: The challenge at the end of any year on any beat is to make sense of the great majority of stories that fall somewhere in the middle. What’s going to “trend” in 2016... Read more
with some retro-futurism: As we get ready to tell yet another year to kiss our collective asses on its way out the door, that also means it’s almost time for that annual liver-killing bacchanal known as New Year’s Eve. But no matter what you have planned this year, I’m fairly certain that your party will not even come close to the costume parties thrown by students and teachers of Germany’s Bauhaus school back in the 1920s. more; via WKO Read more
As usual I will wander between “best” and “favorite” as I see fit. Don’t question me! Best books read for the first time (nonfiction): Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. No contest. Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian. I reviewed it here and riffed on its relevance for married couples here. Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. Susan L. Einbeinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval... Read more
I’m presenting at the Gay Christian Network conference (see my report from last year) and that’s stellar. I have the organizational skills of an especially somnolent area rug, which is less stellar, so I don’t have a place to stay yet. The conference takes place in Houston Jan 7 – 10. My presentation is Friday afternoon. I really need a place to park my carcass. In exchange for a spare bed/couch, I would be glad to speak to your church,... Read more
for AmCon: There are authors whose work so permeates our intellectual atmosphere that by the time we get around to reading them (instead of just gesturing at them), they’re simultaneously familiar and revelatory. This Advent I’m finally reading Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence. They’re unexpectedly in harmony; and their harmony, it turns out, is a carol. more Read more
Eve Tushnet
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