Cultural Studies

Just to get this out of the way, I am an Eagle Scout. From about age eight through sixteen, my non-academic life was scouting. I went through Cub Scouts, Webelos, attended countless summer camps, the Sixteenth World Jamboree in Australia in 1987/88, the 1990 US National Jamboree, the 1990 Nippon Jamboree, have held pretty much

I'm adding Slactivist to my list of blogs to read. I've read him for years - most notably for his insightful running commentary on the Left Behind series, a level of literary and theological pulp that I just won't read so I let him read it for me. It's good stuff. He also does insightful

In a recent issue of New York Magazine, I came across one of those articles where something in your brain clicks and a long-missing Tetris block falls into place. The subcultural locus of my bleak theology is somewhat grounded, aesthetically, in the (then-called) "alternative", post-punk music I discovered in high school in the late 80s/early

It can be easier to learn, to retain information in cadence. Rhythms offer repetition. A kind of re-membering, reattaching significance to each other and to ourselves. Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, Job, Aeneid, Metamorphoses. These are all poems, all ancient stories. These are also all religious poems. Gods are everywhere. And they interact with humans. There is

The Manchester Passion was a public, outdoor event performed on Good Friday, 2006, put on by BBC3 in the English city of Manchester, home to some of the most iconic post-punk and alternative bands of late twentieth century English rock. The goal was simple: tell the story of Good Friday through the seminal and influential