James Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” (1890)
James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, (1890) http://www.templeofearth.com/books/goldenbough.pdf Frazer’s weighty tome(s) opens by invoking JMW Turner’s painting “The Golden Bough” (above). Its idyllic...
View ArticleBethany Moreton, “To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free...
Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Harvard, 2009). Wal-Mart Moms forged today’s America. It seems a cheap compliment to call a book smart and...
View ArticleAmy DeRogatis, “‘Born Again is a Sexual Term’: Demons, STDs, and God’s...
Amy DeRogatis, “‘Born Again is a Sexual Term’: Demons, STDs, and God’s Healing Sperm,” JAAR 77.2 (June 2009): 275-302. DeRogatis’s essay offers some of the most stimulating work on evangelicalism I’ve...
View ArticleLaHaye and Jenkins, “Left Behind” (1995)
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind: A Novel of Earth’s Last Days (1995). Suddenly, without explanation, people disappear en masse. Cars crash into medians, driverless. Passengers vanish from...
View ArticleMary Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966)
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Routledge, 1966) Douglas’s classic anthropological study offers an extended meditation on the concepts of dirt and contagion. As a structuralist, Douglas insists that...
View ArticleDiana Eck, “Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India” (1998 edition)
Diana Eck, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, (1998 ed.) Eck’s essay examines the practices of “holy seeing” among Hindus in India and America. Darshan simply means seeing, but it holds much...
View ArticleJason Bivins, “Religion of Fear” (2008)
Jason Bivins, Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism (2008) Grant Wacker insists that students in his seminars learn to distinguish between what is important and what...
View ArticleAntonio Gramsci, Selections from “Prison Notebooks”
Antonio Gramsci, Section III.1 from The Prison Notebooks, “The Study of Philosophy.” http://www.walkingbutterfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/gramsci-prison-notebooks-vol1.pdf Everyone is a...
View ArticleDipesh Chakrabarty, Selections from “Provincializing Europe”
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Idea of Historicizing Europe,” “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History,” and “Reason and the Critique of Historicism” from Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and...
View ArticleClaude Levi-Strauss, “The Savage Mind” (1966)
Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1966). “Savage mind” does not refer to “primitive” mind or the mind of “savages.” Instead, it describes the mind itself in its “savage” or natural state of...
View ArticleDone
I passed my prelims. Thanks for reading! This blog will undergo some retooling in the coming weeks and months as I start my dissertation. The post Done appeared first on The Prelims Progress by A.T....
View ArticleABD At Last!
I just passed my dissertation proposal defense with flying colors. The title of my soon-to-be dissertation is now official: “Fundamentalist Aesthetics: Sensation and Scripture in Early...
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Religion and World War II
I recently taught a class on religion and World War II in America. Though the acts of chaplains and soldiers certainly matter for the study of religious history, I focused on the ways that religious...
View ArticleCivil religion and baseball
Here I am preparing a class on civil religion on a warm April evening, thinking about baseball. I remembered that Americans haven’t always sung the national anthem at sporting events. Like everything...
View ArticleRise of the Nones
Teaching a class on the “rise of the nones” tomorrow. Found this great 2012 video of Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about his personal attitudes toward religion. I think it nicely illustrates some of the...
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Clarence Larkin Ad from Moody Monthly, September 1920.
Finding this from 1920 is what dissertation research is all about. Clarence Larkin’s Bible prophecy charts never looked so enticing. “The Greatest Book on Dispensational Truth in the World!” Now with...
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Millerite Prophecy Charts
Working on a history of prophecy charts to understand Clarence Larkin better, I’m taken back to this stunning Millerite chart of 1843. (Larkin was not a Millerite or Adventist, so you’ll have to read...
View ArticleDispensationalism Images…
#BA07248 / gettyimages.com The post Dispensationalism Images… appeared first on A.T. Coates.
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Vintage Advertising – Quaker Oats, 1898
Visual culture shapes our world in pretty surprising ways. It’s amazing how some advertising images have managed to persist for a century, structuring our lives in ways we wouldn’t expect. Today I...
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Throwback Thursday – Vintage Ads – Lysol Shaving Cream, 1919
Finally, a shaving cream that contains Lysol! Just what I’ve always wanted! This ad reminds its viewers of the dangers lurking in daily routines. Unsanitary strops, moldy shave brushes, and dirty...
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