By William Yoo (Ph.D Candidate, Emory University) On September 10, 2012, the Washington Post published an article asking whether political conventions have outlived their usefulness with opinions from politicians and strategists in both parties.  In the last week of August, thousands of Republican delegates inundated Tampa to attend their convention.  They heard countless speeches that trumpeted the virtues of their…

By Mark Jefferson (Ph.D. Student, Emory University) From a Christian perspective, death, in a grammatical sense, is not a period but a comma. It is not the culmination of one’s life but a transitory event. Pop culture, conversely, wrestles with the notion of death, particularly its finality, especially when considering the death of one of its heroes. Mortals always seek…

By Min-Ah Cho, Assistant Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN On June 4th, the Vatican censured Sister Margaret A. Farley, because, according to the church hierarchy, her books are out of step with official church teaching on human sexuality. On April 18th, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith issued a report declaring that the…

One of the things I love about Mad Men is that it’s never settled for the stasis of what works. After hooking us with the first season’s glamour, the show moved on – to shocked responses – to explore Don Draper’s terrible fall. Don and Roger’s sexy swaggers grew quickly pathetic and, then, for a short time, quite repulsive. And…