Some of you are familiar with the online magazine Contingent. Historian Erin Bartram has put together a great team of historians who do not work in tenure-track history teaching jobs at colleges and universities. I encourage you to check it...
new books
Episode 105: “‘Heathenism’ in America”
According to historian Kathryn Gin Lum, Americans have long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term “heathen” fell out of common use by the early 1900s, but...
Episode 103: Spiritual Socialists
Does the American Left have religion problem? What can progressives learn from people like Dorothy Day, Ignazio Silone, Henry Wallace, Staughton Lynd, and Cornel West? Many of these thinkers and activists offered a powerful vision for a moral and just...
More John McGreevy on global Catholicism
Check out Carrie Gates’s recent interview with Notre Dame historian John McGreevy. They discuss his new book Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis. A taste: In the book, you address many of the challenges the...
White supremacy in American history textbooks
Over at Esquire, Abigail Covington interviews Harvard historian Donald Yacovone on his recent book, Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity. Here is taste: ESQUIRE: You make it very clear from the start that...
Episode 102: The Ghosts of Colonial Williamsburg
Our guest on this episode, public historian Alena Pirok, explains how John D. Rockefeller’s vision of Colonial Williamsburg eventually gave way to a vision of the site championed by an early 20th century clergyman who saw ghosts. Join us for a conversion...
A conversation with Felicia Wu Song, author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age
This week I joined Current editors Eric Miller and Felicia Wu Song for a conversation on Felicia’s new book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age. The entire interview is available to Deep Water and Storm...
How the Right gets Gramsci wrong
Check out Alan Wald‘s longform review of Laura Marriss’s translation of Jean-Yves Frétigné’s To Live Is to Resist: The Life of Antonio Gramsci. There is a lot in Wald’s piece, but I want to call your attention to this passage:...
Episode 98: “Conversions: Spiritual and Political”
What do Sammy Davis Jr., Muhammad Ali, Clare Booth Luce, Whitaker Chambers, and Charles Colson all have in common? They all had very public religious conversions. In this episode, historian Rebecca Davis joins us to talk about her new book Public...
Current Associate Editor Felicia Wu Song on the “perils of digital discipleship”
Listen to Felicia Wu Song’s interview with Heather Thompson Day at Christianity Today. In addition to her work at Current, she teaches sociology at Westmont College and is the author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the...
The Penguin Book of Exorcisms
Yes, such a book exists. It is edited by Texas State religious studies scholar Joseph P. Laycock and it is the subject of James Butler’s 3249 word review at London Review of Books. Here is a taste of Butler’s review:...
More books to help us understand the Russia-Ukraine war
Harvard University Press offers seven: Stanislav Aseyev, In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas Volodymyr Rafeyenko, Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love Serhii Plokhy, The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present Yuri Kostenko, Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History Karel C....
Johann Neem “walks among the ruins” of the modern university
Some of you may recall our conversation with Johann Neem in Episode 54 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. In that episode we talked with the Western Washington University historian about his book What’s the Point of College....
A patriotism reclamation narrative?
This is how political scientist Maxwell G. Burkey describes Stephen B. Smith’s new book Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes. His review shows little sympathy for Smith’s project. Before we get to Burkey’s review, here is a synopsis of...
Episode 95: “The Lost Promise of American Universities”
American universities entered the 1960s with the hope of bringing a high-quality system of universal higher education to all comers. But by the early 1970s hope turned to despair as universities gave way to neoliberalism, corporatism, and a powerful conservative...
Capitalism exhibits “moral idiocy”
I just learned about Christian cultural critic Rodney Clapp‘s recent book Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age. (I have never met Clapp, but he was the acquisition editor at Baker Books who offered me a contract for Why...
Episode 94: “Gettysburg, 1963”
Our guest in this episode is Gettysburg College historian Jill Ogline Titus. Her new book, Gettysburg 1963, tells the story of the centennial celebration of the Civil War in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Through an examination of the experiences of political...
Current Associate Editor Felicia Wu Song publishes Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age
Congratulations to Felicia Wu Song, Professor of Sociology at Westmont College and Associate Editor of Current on the publication of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age (InterVarsity Press). Here is the IVP Press: We’re being...
Roosevelt Montas’s “heartfelt defense of the Eurocentricity of a Great Books curriculum”
Historian Steve Mintz‘s recent column at Inside Higher Ed reviews Roosevelt Montas‘s forthcoming book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. Here is a taste: For far too long, he...
Eric Miller reviews Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn’s Ars Vitae
Eric Miller is editor of Current. Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn is a Current contributor. And some of you recall my podcast conversation with Lasch-Quinn in Episode 77 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. Here is a taste of Miller’s review...