All Entries in the "Kate Daley-Bailey" Category
Mary Magdalene and Female Authority in the Early Church
By Kate Daley-Bailey….
Abraham’s article awoke anew many concerns I have had with the Catholic Church’s’ ardent fear of the possibility of allowing women into positions of authority in the church. As Abraham so astutely pointed out, the linking of female ordination and sexual abuse of children is startling. Is the Catholic Church launching a preemptive strike against what they fear will be a renewed interest in allowing women into the priesthood? This overreaction led me to investigate the origin of the Church’s fear of women in leadership roles.
The World Ended: Didn’t You Get the Memo?: AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Allegorical Zombie, Part II
By Kate Daley-Bailey….
Kate Daley Bailey continues her exploration of AMC’s The Walking Dead, “the latest embodiment of the apocalyptic zombie phenomena in American popular culture.” In Part I of The World Ended: Didn’t You Get the Memo?, Kate explored rapid globalization, economic anxiety, cultural and religious pluralism, and moral relativism. In Part II, Kate explores the American zombie phenomena as symbolic of the realities of physical decay, mortality, and the ethics of war.
The World Ended: Didn’t You Get the Memo?: AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Allegorical Zombie, Part I
By Kate Daley-Bailey….
To my pleasant surprise, the series appears to be driven by character development, and, while still maintaining a decent amount of gore, highlights many social and moral concerns. While not explicitly stated, the series continues to investigate key issues which dominate the Postmodern American cultural consciousness such as: rapid globalization and economic anxiety, cultural and religious pluralism, moral relativism, the brutal reality of physical decay and mortality, and the ethics of war.
Harry Potter and Aristotle’s Cultivation of Virtue
The Harry Potter series lure readers into their pages with promises of adventure and fantasy, all the while covertly educating us on how to live well. Disguised as pure entertainment, these children books instruct both children and adults on how to make good choices in difficult situations. This is not the first time fantasy has acted as a vehicle for conscious or unconscious moral instruction. One need only think of J.R.R. Tolkien’s tiny hobbit’s duty to face unbearable odds and evil in order to save Middle Earth or the inspiring words of Gandalf the Grey to see elements of moral education or mentoring in many faerie stories.
The Greatest Enemy of American Liberty: Catholicism?
The Protestant American response was understandably anxious regarding the influx of these foreign masses. Some Protestant leaders, such as Reverend Lyman Beecher Horace Bushnell, voiced anti-Catholic sentiments. Many Protestant Americans harbored nativist (anti-immigrant) views and feared that the U.S. would quickly become a bastion of Catholicism and a political puppet of the Pope in Rome.
In Conversation with Dr. Carolyn J. Medine, Part II
Kate Daley-Bailey, Religion Nerd Contributor and visiting instructor at Georgia State University, recently spent an afternoon In Conversation With Dr. Carolyn J. Medine, associate professer at the University of Georgia. Kate and Dr. Medine’s lively discussion spans many aspects of Religious Studies including the responsibilities of teaching, current projects, the importance of mentoring, and the significance of the discipline of Religious Studies.
In Conversation with Dr. Carolyn J. Medine, Part I
Kate Daley-Bailey, Religion Nerd Contributor and visiting instructor at Georgia State University, recently spent an afternoon In Conversation With Dr. Carolyn J. Medine, associate professer at the University of Georgia. Kate and Dr. Medine’s lively discussion spans many aspects of Religious Studies including the responsibilities of teaching, current projects, the importance of mentoring, and the significance of the discipline of Religious Studies.
Bayer Commercial Appropriates Ancient Story and Misses the Mark
By Kate Daley-Bailey Renowned American Religion scholar, Catherine L. Albanese, opens her now classic text, America: Religions and Religion, with the following statement: There is a story that both Buddhists and some Muslims claim as their own and like to use as a teaching device. It is about an elephant and a group of blind [...]
Moral Monster: The Literary Vampire
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula… the Count is not much more than an inversion of his enemies, a demon, or a supernatural serial killer. In Anne Rice’s novel series, penned some 80 years later, the fledging vampire Louis is a tormented being… extraordinary and yet pitiful. Then some 25 years after Louis’ debut in Interview with a Vampire, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series introduces the Cullens family to the literary vampire scene… oddly enough, as moral exemplars. Investigating how an author presents vampire literature and how an audience of readers accepts the Other in literature may help cultural observers, like myself, to determine how a community defines itself. In particular, I am interested to see if there is a correlation between the method of narration used in vampire literature and the degree to which these so called Others are humanized in the minds of readers.
