“A Wonder of the Age”: Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

Now 250 years old, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral shows off Phillis Wheatley’s skill as a writer as well as her Christian faith.

“I’ve Never Been So Happy to See So Many Wrinkles”: How Star Trek: Picard Aged Gracefully

Star Trek: Picard emphasizes the value and wisdom that only age and experience can provide.

“We Have Something That Needs to Be Told”: An Interview with Stephen Atherholt, Lead Actor in I Heard the Bells

Stephen Atherholt plays poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the film I Heard the Bells.

“It’s an Old Song, and We’re Gonna Sing It Again”: Hadestown, Sir Orfeo, and Music for the End of Time

There is indeed an affinity to the classical pagan tale in Hadestown, one that tells us much about our own day—especially when compared to the medieval poem Sir Orfeo.

How Nichelle Nichols Made Uhura the Life of the Party

Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura was a generous person, a hospitable person, one who extended the hand of fellowship to those around her.

100 Years Later, Nosferatu Still Casts a Long Shadow

Nosferatu is a relic of a day when people were not afraid to make moral judgments and make their monsters monstrous.

Spider-Man: Not Just a Man, but a Just Man

Spider-Man: No Way Home is about a boy becoming a man — and a just one at that.

Don’t Throw Away Your Nativity Sets: Why Jesus May Not Have Been Born in a “Lower Room”

Jesus’s birth is a breach of human hospitality, not an example of it.

Shang-Chi and the Porous Self

Shang-Chi moved away from the modern “buffered” self toward a recognition of the enchanted “porous” self.

The Mysterious Benedict Society Recap: You Are Seen (Episode 8)

In a variety of ways, The Mysterious Benedict Society series is more emotive and less disciplined than its print counterpart.

The Mysterious Benedict Society Recap: Go! (Episode 7)

In The Mysterious Benedict Society,“going” isn’t intrinsically good or bad: it depends on how you are going…and whom you are going with.

The Mysterious Benedict Society Recap: Truth Be Told (Episode 6)

The Mysterious Benedict Society poses deep, perhaps insoluble, questions related to the subject of truthfulness.

The Mysterious Benedict Society Recap: Unity, Not Uniformity (Episode 5)

The Mysterious Benedict Society insists that true unity proceeds through difference, not in spite or in opposition to difference.

“That’s Just What the Hebrews Thought”: On Sacred and Secular Relics in Film

Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the best Indiana Jones installments present viewers with truly sacred relics.

The Mysterious Benedict Society Recap: It’s the Little Things (Episode 4)

The Mysterious Benedict Society episode “A Whisper, Not a Shout” shares with its source material an emphasis on the importance of small, seemingly insignificant acts.

The Mysterious Benedict Society Recap: Oh Brother! (Episode 3)

Mr. Curtain in The Mysterious Benedict Society series differs from his counterpart in the novel but nicely satirizes the quintessential twenty-first-century tech baron.