Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4674 )

• The Price of Writing

  

  Academic writing strives to remove personality from your work. It can be soul-crushing. I remember well when my daughter—a talented writer—came home in sixth... Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• The Zone

  

  My youth—who am I kidding?—my life has been a search for father figures. Since I grew up with television, many of them came from the tube. The professor from... Read more

  Posted on 30 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Live Long

  

  Maybe you went through it too. In your teenage years the fascination began. Before you knew it, you had a stack of them tucked away, each well-thumbed and... Read more

  Posted on 29 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Ghouls and Dolls

  

  It was my plan—as if plans ever really work out—to see Annabelle Comes Home on opening weekend. July got away from me but I finally found my way to the theater... Read more

  Posted on 28 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Sighs

  

  Suspiria is a movie intentionally difficult to follow. The original 1977 version was an Italian film about witches posing as dance instructors. Read more

  Posted on 27 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Monsters and Gods

  

  Nothing makes you feel quite as old as seeing a documentary where the names of the experts are unfamiliar to you because they’re too young. So it was when I... Read more

  Posted on 26 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Universals

  

  It was on television that I met them. The Universal monsters. The entire run of films from Dracula to The Creature Walks among Us had been shot, printed, and... Read more

  Posted on 25 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Funny Business

  

  Do animals laugh? The question sounds innocuous enough, and when my wife played me a RadioLab episode on that very question, the conclusion, although cautious,... Read more

  Posted on 24 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Fearing Errata

  

  Well before I became an editor, I noted mistakes in books. I go through phases of marking up books as I read them—in pencil only, please!—and not doing so, but ... Read more

  Posted on 23 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Internet Epistemology

  

  Where do we find reliable information? I’m asking this question on an internet-based medium, which itself is ironic. While spending time with some younger... Read more

  Posted on 22 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Witch Way from Here?

  

  Häxan is often considered a horror film. Produced by Benjamin Christensen, it was released in 1922, the same year as Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. Read more

  Posted on 21 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Making Monsters

  

  It’s not so much I’ve been away from monsters lately, but that life has intervened between them and me. Life can be scarier than monsters sometimes. Read more

  Posted on 20 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Identity Crisis

  

  Living in Boston can be a heady trip for a budding academic. Even if you’re across the river from Harvard and MIT, it’s a city known for its education scene.... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Tumblin’ Down

  

  RadioLab (not to be confused with Radiohead) is an NPR program to which my wife likes to listen. She’s introduced me to a few episodes since, as a person who... Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Digging Well

  

  Having spent a good bit of the past week in waiting rooms in Ithaca, I fell to reading Tompkins Weekly, the free local community paper. Read more

  Posted on 17 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Alien Ideas

  

  One of the iconic moments in all of cinema, known well beyond the confines of sci-fi and horror fans, is the alien bursting out of Executive Officer Kane’s... Read more

  Posted on 16 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Born Once More

  

  Every once in a while a reader, either here or on other social media, asks me what my religious beliefs are. The expected answer to such a question is the... Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Bible Misunderstood

  

  Okay, so I wrote a post a couple days ago about evangelicals challenging Trump’s China tariffs because it will raise the price of Bibles. Little did I know... Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Good Ground

  

  Young adult literature gives me hope. The quality, speaking for a guy who grew up in a small town with limited choices, has improved astronomically over the pas... Read more

  Posted on 13 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• A Decade

  

  Please pardon my being sentimental, but today marks one decade of blogging on Sects and Violence in the Ancient World. I realized, thinking this over, that I... Read more

  Posted on 12 July 2019 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY