Evil in the Classroom: Deception and Desire
Using the Seven Deadly Sins as a template, two college professors explore the impulses which lay at the heart of academic plagiarism.
desire
A Mall is just a Mall, and (Sometimes) That’s All We Want
In this article, William Dyrness responds to Robert Covolo and Cory Willson’s attempt to position themselves between theological account of culture and cultural practices outlined in James K. A. Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom and Dyrness’s book Poetic Theology.
Mad Men and the Pursuit of Happiness
One is immediately suspicious of any attempt to distill the glorious complexities of Mad Men down to any single theme. Depending on who you ask, it is a show about the birth of the cool, a nostalgic look at the 1960s (some people talk as if it deserves an official papal pronouncement: “It is how […]
The Real Jeff Koons: Consumer Culture and the Grammar of Desire
In 1980 the young artist Jeff Koons presented his first major solo exhibition, a window installation at New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, titled, appropriately, The New. Alongside hermetically sealed vitrines showcasing “ready-made”1 household appliances like a New Hoover Deluxe Rug Shampooer and a New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon, there were images: meticulously reproduced […]
“Why Are You Apologizing for Bleeding?” Confronting the Evangelical Embrace of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, Part I
Real love happens between two people of value, not between a girl who thinks she is nothing and the boy is everything. —Beth Felker Jones, Touched by a Vampire Since the publication of Twilight in 2005, Stephenie Meyer’s teen vampire romance saga has rapidly gained ground as a pop culture phenomenon to rival that of Harry Potter. […]
Consumption Junction, What’s Your Function? A Review of William Cavanaugh’s Being Consumed
This is a review of William T. Cavanaugh’s Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire.
How (Not) to Think about Death: A Meditation on Life
This essay argues that although it is common in contemporary philosophy to claim that the ineluctability of death entails its internality, thinking of death as ineluctable and external is much more fruitful.
A Sinful Doctrine?: Sexuality and Gender in Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin: Part 1
{Theologian General’s Warning: This doctrine [of original sin] has been identified by certain members of the theological community as a contributor to the oppression and marginalization of women, and therefore as an inhibitor of the flourishing of creation as a whole. Should you continue to make use of this doctrine, please be aware of its threat […]