May

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking right now and how writers are trying to keep up. Here are some routes we found in April that opened up new vistas on what it means to be modern and how became we that way.

Dark as this may seem, it opens the door to the only true agency that we have in such circumstances: the choice between hope and despair, between faith and doubt.

Micah Heinz reads Albert Camus during the Coronavirus.

Disney’s atom acts as an all-powerful sentient being, radioisotopes resemble the magical dust of Tinkerbell, and atomic energy emerges as the ultimate transmutation of matter that can lead to limitless health and wealth.

Christopher Fite finds a mix of power, ideology, and racism in a Disney film

Tracing art’s genealogy, we find that she is not the sister of religion, an equal rival, but a daughter.

Kathryn Mogk reads Station Eleven during the coronavirus.

If people choose to go on speaking nonsense, that’s just part of the game. What ‘One True Life’ offers is an invitation to play a different one, the stakes of which could not be higher.

Taylor Ross reviews One True Life and finds we must change our lives.

Douthat begs us to consider the possibilities that we reached for in the past, less out of nostalgia, and more as inspiration: a cry of ‘Why not?’ that can lift us beyond screens, comfort, and deadlock toward a common goal.

Michael J. Nevadomski reviews Ross Douthat’s The Decadent Society.

For however emptied out a religious rite might appear, it still confirms that the unnamable experience of death has a place within the universe.

Donato Loia reflects on rituals of death in the modern world.

The racialization of crime in the United States can be traced all the way back to the earliest legislation directly addressing race relations: the slave codes.

Miranda Pilipchuk traces a genealogy of racism and sexism in the American judicial system.

The love of one’s neighbor—or of the stranger, the enemy, the other, or humanity in general—has a complex genealogy in the Christian ‘West.’

Sarah Louise MacMillen writes on the genealogy of neighborly love and solidarity.

April

Each month we keep track of the differing paths modern life is taking right now and how writers are trying to keep up. Here are some routes we found that opened up new vistas on being modern and how we got that way.

For T.S. Eliot, Modernist literature was novel in form, not concept.

Nayeli Riano considers the possibility of a modern society with a living tradition.

Gnosticism is not limited to the Christian heresy, but is an entire worldview built on the belief that the world in which we live is not actually good, true, or beautiful.

Rachel Coleman asks whether modernity is fundamentally gnostic.

Philosophy has a reputation for being lofty and arcane, but Stoic texts have left dusty philosophy bookcases and have found themselves in the hands of eager readers

Christopher Quintana explores the contemporary fascination with Stoicism.

Instead of free-thinking Deists, a new generation of physicians argued that the experience of paranormal phenomena indicated a kind of mental or physiological illness.

Richard Yoder looks to early modernity to examine magic, science, and the origins of modernity.

We are dealing with a ghost ship, a reminder that the modernity we seek to understand is profoundly haunted.

Christopher Fite asks what a “haunted modernity” means for the history of science.

Desmond attempts to awaken us to the ‘blooming, darting, singing world’ that exists beyond our construction.

Terence Sweeney reviews William Desmond’s recent work The Voiding of Being

A pandemic forces us to confront one of the most important and essential religious problems: the problem of theodicy.

Donato Loia meditates on certainty, faith, and an empty St. Peter’s Square.

An artist in love with and enmeshed in a tradition…

Jessica Sweeney critiques the excessive emphasis on originality in modern art.

Tim Barr assembles articles for living during quarantine.

Kirsten Hall reviews the newest version of Emma and questions different ways of using humor.