A Facebook friend shared the above meme which features this quotation: “The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.” – Alexandra K. Trenfor I was just going to chime in in response to add “or hear” alongside not telling people what to see when directing them where to look, since the person who shared the quote is a composer and music professor. But almost immediately in response to the... Read more
All across the United States there are people who wonder how anyone could possibly support Donald Trump, and people who wonder how anyone could possibly support Joe Biden. It is easy–much too easy–to assume in accordance with one’s own self-perception that the answer is simple: we’re good and they’re evil. That diagnosis of the way things are may or may not be ultimately correct, but I want to argue here that there is much more to it than that. Evil... Read more
I hope that those who appreciate puns as much as I do will like the title of this post, and that those who consider spelling of paramount importance will forgive me for it. At a time when our society is divided between those two camps, I am nailing my pun-making colors to the mast (and am by no means the first to make this pun). But as you have probably guessed, that isn’t the contemporary divide that I want to... Read more
Halloween provides another example of what I have come to realize is a standard tactic of conservative Evangelicalism. Someone quoted a small snippet of Ephesians 5 and applied it to the October 31st holiday. They don’t celebrate it, they said, and Christians shouldn’t celebrate it, because we are to have nothing to do with the “deeds of darkness.” So typical. Whatever it may or may not have been for small numbers of people in the distant past, Halloween today is... Read more
The title of this post says it all: Fundamentalism is fundamentally unbiblical. Now, before you ask, I obviously don’t mean that Christian fundamentalists do not quote the Bible in support of their views, beliefs and practices. They do. Of course, they consistently condemn others for “picking and choosing” and yet that is what they themselves are doing, but that’s not the subject of today’s post. Just about anyone who wishes to can be “biblical” in the sense of finding verses that support their... Read more
When I made my syllabus for my course on Religion and Science Fiction, I did not intentionally schedule the discussion of post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories for the class meeting immediately prior to election day 2020. But it worked out perfectly. We spent the class making lists of ways that the world could end. It was a very helpful exercise. When we list and categorize things it usually makes things clearer, even if what needs to become clear is that things... Read more
I am long overdue to blog about the return of Star Trek: Discovery. I would have done so sooner if it had been clear that the first episode, called “That Hope Is You, Part 1,” was not really the first episode of a two-parter in the traditional sense. The second episode of the season, “Far From Home,” is simply the introduction to the season from a different perspective, with both in essence picking up where the previous season ended. I... Read more
A great many of my blog posts are born from the unexpected intersections and connections between things that I research, teach, hear, and read. This one is sparked by beginning to watch the TV series The Good Lord Bird. The title does not immediately make its reference clear, much less what the focus of the story will be. The series about the abolitionist John Brown. The first episode is prefaced by the disclaimer that “All of this is true. Most... Read more
A Facebook friend shared this bit of news–and not because they thought this was a good idea, I might add. Patrick Stewart Wants To See A Star Trek/Star Wars Crossover Movie I wrote in a comment that I do not think a crossover sounds like a good idea, but it wasn’t for the reason that the sharer suggested, claiming that Star Wars is more fantasy while Star Trek is more science fiction. I hear that a lot, and I want... Read more
CALL FOR PAPERS Modalities of Fantasy: Reconfiguring Time and Space Domain of the Fantastic is the ground for physical, biological, and metaphysical riddles about the architecture of perceived natural order of ‘life’ which re-organizes readers’ world to forge novel experiences of reality. Immediacy of the domain of Fantasy becomes relevant as a radical Other of our pandemic-hit reality—which is forcing us to make sense of the present world and devise new meanings—by introducing alternate perspectives on human condition that edge... Read more
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