In the last few days and weeks, dozens of women have come forward accusing Hollywood director Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, assault, and in some cases, rape. Many of these women are actors whose experiences of sexual violence originate when they were getting their start in Hollywood. Although we might be tempted to limit the […]
By Sarah Emanuel. On June 10, 2017, I sat in a crowded theater to watch Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Wonder Woman on the big screen. At first blush, I was in awe of her. I admired her strength. I valued her persistence. I liked that she had thighs. It was as if I had been […]
Professors across the land are preparing to return to the classroom, beginning with the all-important discussion on first day: setting the ground rules. Sometimes I ask the class to generate guidelines, beginning with their top list of classroom dos and don’ts. And inevitably, after “listen to others,” “don’t dominate the conversation,” and “respect other views,” […]
Before there was a Katniss Everdeen of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, there were Offred and Moira of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). Both story-worlds imagine similar outcomes for a future post-American reality, exploring life within democracy-turned-totalitarian societies as expressed from the perspective of some of its most oppressed and vulnerable bodies: children and […]
It’s that time of the year again… yes, it is the beginning (or is it the middle already?) of the U.S. version of “the holidays.” But, in a related fashion, what I’m currently thinking about is that time of the semester again. Specifically, we just finished our ritual week in my introductory course, a week […]
What if “Godspell” (by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak) and “Jesus Christ Superstar” (by Andrew Lloyd Webber) had been based on feminist theologies? What if those songs performed in high school musicals reflected the work of a generation of feminist scholars in religion? What if the catchy tunes that stick in peoples’ heads and form […]
As much as the 2012 U.S. presidential election and issues related to it have been at the center of public debate in America, so too have the election of the 19th National Assembly members (April 11th) and the 2012 presidential election (December) occupied the hearts and minds of people in South Korea. Given the heavy […]
I am trying to make sense of the installation art piece by the Black Swedish artist, Makode Aj Linde. As part of an art exhibit that focuses on female genital mutilation, Linde created a Venus Hottentot cake body for which he served as the head. Each time one of the attendees, largely White folks, cut […]
The following lines of poetry, first breathed by Sufi mystic Rumi and later masterfully translated into English by Coleman Barks, inspire both my theological locus and the way in which I make art. Rumi writes: Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.[1] […]
In my intimate circles, Oscar Sunday is a holy day of obligation. And, as with most holidays, the longer I keep it, the more ambivalently I feel about it. There are a host of issues around these films and the industry that generates them, not the least being the way Hollywood reflects and, worse, constructs […]