Steveawiggins
MY BLOGS
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Sects and Violence in the Ancient World
http://sawiggins.wordpress.com/
A blog that tries to find intelligent things to say about religion and related subjects.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 4660 )
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Ebf
The third annual Easton Book Festival is underway. As part of it Eric Ziolkowski, the chair of the Religious Studies department at Lafayette College,... Read more
Posted on 22 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
New Monster
The Babadook is a horror film about loneliness. Written and directed by Jennifer Kent, it has an arthouse cinema feel to it. I missed it when it came out in... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Interview Two
October turns the northern hemisphere mind toward Halloween. It must be strange to receive northern media while living in the global south—Halloween occurs jus... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Kindred Spirit?
Possession stories have a poignancy to them that perhaps other horror stories lack. The loss of self-control is a frightful thing. Read more
Posted on 19 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Documenting Horror
Watching documentaries always seems to raise questions. I recently found A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss on YouTube. Produced by the BBC in 2010, the set... Read more
Posted on 18 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Steel Industry
It was a building on Broadway, just south of Times Square. I don’t know the name of the building or remember what business it may have housed, but I did... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Face Away
I’m avoiding Facebook for a while. Here’s why. I started a Facebook account when I first got involved in social media. (Publishers say you have to build a... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Paywall
They were my former employer, for goodness sake! Here’s how it happened. It begins with research. Nobody is born knowing all they need to learn. Research... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
It’s Thorpe, Jim
On a rainy fall day we found ourselves in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. We’d been through the touristy town before, but had never had any luck finding parking so... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Dark Academia
Genres can be slippery things. Those of us who dabble in fiction sometimes find it difficult to describe what we do. Writing is individual expression and it... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Eve’s True Desire
Psst—don’t tell anyone! There is a free copy of my first book available on Academia.edu. I thought I was kind of radical for doing that, but people who write... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Taking Part
It’s always a pleasure to be invited, even if not as a proper guest. To an academic conference, I mean. Most of us sit around feeling pretty obscure most of... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
What’s Class Got to Do with It?
As an editor you get to read synopses of nascent books across a wide variety of disciplines. A live topic in sociology and poli-sci is class. As in “the hidde... Read more
Posted on 10 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Quest for Quest
The Quest for the Wicker Man is a rarity. Not only is it very difficult to locate and very expensive if you do find it, it’s also a collection of essays where... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Paper Chase
Maybe you’ve done it too. Kissed the posterior of technology. Up until three years ago I didn’t pay bills online. I waited for a bill, wrote a check,... Read more
Posted on 08 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Book Or Movie?
The funny thing about people, or at least one of the funny things, is that when individuals get together we notice different things. It can happen at in-person... Read more
Posted on 07 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Podcast Live
Have you ever had one of those weeks where you forgot what day it was? (Come on, now, it’s a pandemic—you can admit it!) I spent yesterday unaware that it... Read more
Posted on 06 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
More Ethnic Monsters
There seems to be a real interest, this haunting season, for cultures to claim their monsters. I recently wrote about a story on the Jewish background to... Read more
Posted on 05 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Time Keeps on
Do you want to feel old? Consider this BBC headline: “TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK.” If you’re like me you first heard of TikTo... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
B Film
October brings horror films to mind. As soon as the calendar clicks over, discussions of favorite scary movies begins. As I’ve mentioned many times before,... Read more
Posted on 03 October 2021 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY
