I’ve long thought there should be more musical settings of biblical texts in a jazz idiom, but my own expertise composing and writing in that idiom is so meager that I don’t feel able to contribute in as meaningful ways as I wish I could myself. So for now I’ll content myself with the output of others, such as Jeremy Walker, who has set seven of the Psalms in the Bible in a jazz idiom in an impressive way. Have... Read more
The Leisure Hive introduces a lot that is new into Doctor Who. The first is the new intro sequence with new music, similar to what would characterize Peter Davison era as well, marking the arrival of the 1980s. John Nathan Turner took the lead on the show as of this episode, and John Leeson returned as the voice of K-9. We saw a completely new scarf pattern for the first time in the Tom Baker era (even though the scarf... Read more
The current situation places the wellbeing not just of individuals but societies and the world at serious risk. It is a time when the widespread rejection of expertise and embrace of misinformation has reached, if you will, pandemic levels. And yet the economic impact of the literal pandemic can make this situation all the worse, as funding for public universities and the financial situation of private universities is jeopardized, and as students who wanted to study find themselves forced to... Read more
It always seems to be an interesting time to teach my course on China and the Islamic Middle East, one of several courses that students can take in the Global and Historical Studies part of the core curriculum at Butler University. Last semester there were protests in Hong Kong. This semester there was a virus that seems to have originated in Wuhan. Of course, we tend to focus on major players and regions in courses like these, and there will... Read more
A call for book proposals, including a range of possible types, on an interesting and timely topic: For the new De Gruyter Oldenbourg series Video Games and the Humanities we are inviting manuscript proposals (monographs, edited/co-authored volumes, reader). We encourage submissions from early career scholars and established researchers alike. They can be sent at any stage of a project, but ideally include one or two sample chapters and a detailed synopsis of the project. All titles in the series are peer reviewed and published... Read more
I am delighted that the Enoch Seminar, a forward-thinking organization by its very nature, was very quick to adjust to the uncertainty created by the pandemic and to organize an online meeting for the summer of 2020. As with all Enoch Seminar meetings, this is an event with invited papers and attendees. If you are an academic who works in a field related to the topic, however, you should feel free to reach out to one of the session organizers... Read more
I should say up front that this blog post is not about the Doctor Who episode “The Invisible Enemy.” It’s a good one to watch at the moment, as ever, and you should read my blog post about it. But this is about the “invisible enemy” that has been appearing in political rhetoric recently, as well as another invisible enemy that we may be neglecting. In a blog post Adam Kotsko wrote a while back, two ideas that have been... Read more
Loren Rosson writes about the classic rock song “Baba O’Reilly” by The Who: [The 1970s] was a confused decade, but a groovy one that saw a lot of transgressive creativity, especially in music. “Baba O’Riley” is much about that burgeoning artistry. But it’s also about something else, something more esoteric: Townshend’s infatuations with two particular figures. The first is Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual master who claimed that he was an Avatar, or an incarnation of God. Baba had his... Read more
A recent article about Ken Dark’s archaeological work in Nazareth, now published in his book Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and its Hinterland, says: The new archaeological investigation – the largest ever carried out into Roman period Nazareth – has revealed that Jesus’s hometown is likely to have been considerably bigger than previously thought. It probably had a population of up to 1,000 (rather than just being a small-to-medium sized village of 100-500, as previously thought). And again: The newly emerging... Read more
There’s so much that one can say about Altered Carbon at the intersection of religion. I recognize that I haven’t blogged about earlier seasons, in which the notion is explored that ‘Meths’ like Rei and Bancroft (who can afford to change their sleeve – i.e. their body – while their personality is backed up, transfers, and lives forever) are “living gods.” As actor James Purefoy put it in an interview related to season 1, “I loved the duality of being so... Read more
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