With Demons Held Responsible These Days for Everything from Covid to LGBTQ Rights, Take a Visual Tour of the History of Demonization
During our season of political madness, it took a lot to trigger a double-take, and…
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Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel
Willa Cather is so associated with the Nebraska prairie’s expanse, depicted in novels like O…
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History Matters: On the 400th Anniversary of Plymouth We’re Still Clinging to Destructive National Myths
Within William Bradford’s massive work, Of Plymouth Plantation, composed between 1630 and 1651 while he…
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In a Time of Chaos and Misrule, Mardi Gras’ Subversive Message is Virtually Meaningless
Historically amongst the revelers at Venice’s celebrated Mardi Gras Carnival, are those costumed in the…
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Literary Critic George Steiner, Whose Views on Anti-Semitism Drew Controversy, Dies at 90
In 2019 the community of literary scholars marked the passing of the pugilistic and controversial…
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MLK Monument That Never Was, is a Reminder of the King Too Often Ignored
During the controversy surrounding the selection of a design for the Martin Luther King Jr….
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A Devil’s Dozen of the Best ‘New Religion Journalism’ Books of the Decade
Since the turn of this century, following the news is like experiencing a daily repudiation…
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Thanksgiving Reveals More About Us Than About 17th Century Events
A reluctant Indian militant, a Jew with Christmas envy, and a feminist in search of an alternative Thanksgiving are among the scholars and writers who have weighed in over the years on our secular religious national holiday of Thanksgiving.
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Struggling With the Legacy of Harold Bloom, Brilliant but Deeply Flawed Critic (1930-2019)
For all that Bloom got wrong about theory and the state of the discipline, he was correct in his contention that the sometimes godlessness of the field was a critical detriment, and that ‘A nation obsessed with religion rather desperately needs a religious criticism.’
Read MoreToni Morrison, Prophet of America’s Demons (1931-2019)
Morrison’s witness to language’s power to both destroy and create has been on ample display in our current season of American blood-letting. In 1993 Morrison warned of “Tongue-suicide,” which is “common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is … human.”
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