If you want to understand secularism, Emily Ogden reminds us in Credulity, then you can begin with the art of…
Book blog

Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
The secularist killjoy: A reply to Schaefer and Smith
I am grateful to Donovan Schaefer and Caleb Smith for their productive, provocative responses. Both in their different ways have…
Open Sky (after Paul Virilio)
After Trump was elected president it felt like the sky had turned to iron with nothing but smudgy glass portals…
Modern flashiness: A method
Of her informants from the Hillview UFO Experiencers group to the Little A’Le’Inn, Lepselter writes, “[Y]ou don’t need a Christian…
Openings and flashes: A reply to Shelton and Sornito
Here are two intensely original essays in distinct voices and registers that also repeatedly intersect. Reading Christina Sornito and Allen…
In the spirit of reconciliation
Pamela Klassen offers her subtle and judicious book to us “in the spirit” of the call issued in the 2015…
The discipline of Radio Mind
Pamela Klassen skillfully leads readers to consider important underlying and interconnected concerns throughout The Story of Radio Mind, including occasions…
Networks of reception, conditions of audibility: A reply to Johnson and Walker
The line between critique and credulity, or between cynicism and naiveté, is at the heart of all of the books…
Dangerous doubles and magical ethics
As the superstar-magician walks through an urban shanty in the middle of his television special Magic Man (1998), David Blaine’s…
Thinking with/through analogies
Jones takes his readers on an ethnohistorical journey that traverses instrumental magic (which is mostly occult and “primitive”), stage magic…