Books
Small Revelations
Garth Greenwell’s latest novel, Small Rain, centers attention as a moral discipline and asks how art can help us live. By Sarah Fleming
A Very Special (and Mysterious) Day
A Q&A with Jon D. Levenson on his new book, Israel’s Day of Light and Joy: The Origin, Development, and Enduring Meaning of the Jewish Sabbath. By Faye Bodley-Dangelo
The Children at 80
Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense offers a still relevant perspective on the idealistic and cynical tendencies in US democracy. By Bradley Shingleton
Honoring Lives Ravaged by Addiction
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and Donovan X. Ramsey’s When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era offer powerful narratives in the context of communities beset by addiction epidemics. By Mara Willard
‘A Pedagogy of Coming to See’
A Q&A with Francis X. Clooney, S.J., about his memoir Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story. By Wendy McDowell
Knowing Animals: Buddhist and Posthuman Resources for a New Interspecies Ethics
A selected reading list from Janet Gyatso’s course.
The Smoldering Superhuman
Jeffrey J. Kripal’s The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities calls for a “postcritical” study of religion that embraces more expansive anthropologies, ontologies, and epistemologies. By Charles M. Stang
Dreaming of Superhumans: New Reactionary Nietzschean Fantasies
A fresh round of reactionary groups are appropriating Friedrich Nietzsche to promote virulent new strains of the “superhuman.” By Nicholas E. Low
Speaking “Sex” into Living Languages
A Q&A with Mark D. Jordan on his new book, Queer Callings: Untimely Notes on Names and Desires. By Faye Bodley-Dangelo
Reframing Forgiveness
A Q&A with Matthew Ichihashi Potts on his latest book, Forgiveness: An Alternative Account. By Suzie Greco
Film & Television
Thinking (and Talking) in an Emergency
In How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023), crisis and expediency justify violence at the expense of democratic processes. By Russell C. Powell
Mormonism, the ‘Most American’ Religious Other
Mormons continue to be depicted in popular culture as victims, criminals, or disaffected. By Jaxon Washburn
Dune, or the Order of Time
Convergences of messianism, religion, and politics in Frank Herbert’s Dune and Dune Messiah resonate with his time and our own. By Charles M. Stang
Without Why: Religion without Purpose in Pixar’s Soul
Pixar’s Soul asks fundamental questions about existence and challenges the idea that life is reducible to purpose, religious or otherwise. By Matthew C. Kruger
Fully Fleshed Out: Religion, Womanhood, and Blackness in Contemporary Media
Positive, complex representations of black women’s religious experience in Queen Sugar and Being Serena. By LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant
Jewish Identity and Biblical Exposition in Darren Aronofsky’s Films
Evaluating the use of ancient Jewish modes of interpretation in Aronofsky’s mother! and Noah. By Eric X. Jarrard
Where Silence Lives
The documentary In Pursuit of Silence creates a space for a long overdue conversation about the nuanced subject of silence. By Timothy L. Gallati
Nostalgia Awakens
Star Wars: The Force Awakens anticipates and addresses the concerns of a nostalgic audience. By Robert Hensley-King
Three Films Depict Sinhalese Buddhism
In three Sinhalese Buddhist movies, Theravada religion and culture is vividly narrated, interpreted, and reimagined. By Chipamong Chowdhury
Girls and Sarah Coakley, Through a Theological Lens of Desire
Examining the relationship between desire and transformation in two disparate works: Girls and Sarah Coakley’s God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay “On the Trinity.” By Peter Boumgarden
