Alejandro Nava Besides resurrecting ancient poetic traditions of the bard or griot, and adopting the creative vernacular of black folklore, radio DJs, church preachers, street corner poets, and Jamaican artists, hip hop strikes a more ominous and apocalyptic tone.
Sifting Through Hip Hop, Literature and Religion: 7 Questions for Alejandro Nava
Comedy Central’s “Nathan For You”: Kafka for Late Capitalism
Daniel Anderson Yet there is a deeper connection between Kafka and Nathan For You. It lies in their insight into the utter control their worlds’ institutions wield over people.
The Wisdom of Umberto Eco
Ed Simon If the loss of Eco is both a loss of a genuine public intellectual who saw no shame in celebrating complexities, then it is also the loss of a scholar who transcended the boring culture war debates that bifurcate all experience into the religious and the secular. He understood the undeniably sacred nature of the written word, where all interpretation must in some sense be exegetical.
Doomsday Politics
Kelly J. Baker In 2008, some conservative evangelicals declared on email, websites and forums that the future president, Barack Obama, was not a Muslim in hiding, but decidedly more dangerous. They compared Obama to the charismatic Anti-Christ of the of the Left Behind series, Nicolae Carpathia.
Superhero Afterlife (Abridged)
A. David Lewis is a national lecturer in Comics Studies and an award-winning graphic novelist. He holds a PhD in Religion and Literature from Boston University and is a founding member of Sacred and Sequential. His book, American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife, is now available from Palgrave Macmillan.
The Bible in Comics: Genesis
By Beth Davies-Stofka, PhD The Bible was written on scrolls, papyri, and parchment and rendered in languages ancient or dead. For some religious people, it would seem an act of disrespect, if not sacrilege, to translate its stories and lessons into pictures. Yet down the centuries, countless believers have eagerly translated the Bible into art, sculpture, music, and architecture. To encounter the Bible in art is to encounter the reverence, the joy, and even the missionary zeal of the artist. In the most notable examples, we also feel the artist’s curiosity, the will to explore the unexplored dimensions of his […]