When tasked with writing about that most significant of terms—science—the mind stumbles to contain its conceptual expanse. But as I…
John Lardas Modern
John Lardas Modern is professor in the department of religious studies at Franklin & Marshall College. Former editor-at-large for The Immanent Frame, he co-curated Frequencies and coedits Class 200: New Studies in Religion (both with Kathryn Lofton). Modern is the author of Secularism in Antebellum America (University of Chicago Press) and The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs (University of Illinois Press). "The Religion Machine; or, a particular history of the brain" is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Modern is also working on a long-term project that explores the end of the world through the lens of Akron, OH. A former member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Studies and ACLS Frederick Burkhardt fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Modern teaches courses in religious history, aesthetics, and science studies.
Conversion diptych
I. Showing the Extraordinary Work Which Has of Late Been Going On in This Land The work of conversion is…
eBay and the historical imagination
Some seek God in algorithms. Others seek a kind of divinity in the pastness of the past. The former seek…
Frequencies
Some readers may have recently returned to Frequencies only to find that its spiritual focus had radically shifted. Due to hijinks…
Vinyl prayers
Prayer may be an act of gratitude after the fact. It may be a weapon, a request to heal the…
Confused parchments, infinite socialities
Ambivalence, avoidance, hedging, delay—these are but some of my responses to Michael Warner’s richly rendered provocation and response to my…
Frequencies 91/100 – 100/100
Today marks the hundredth entry in Frequencies.
Reflections on summer reading
As the summer months draw to a close, we've turned again to a handful of our contributors, asking: What are…
Every moment an Aha! Moment!
Kathryn Lofton’s Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon is a work, first and foremost, of cultural anthropology. The back cover…
The sun shone fiercely through the window at Starbucks (Part II)
Soon after reading Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, I turned to Courtney Bender’s The New Metaphysicals. It is…