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Dear Ange, Kobe Kinney

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

The Proposal, Ella Beam

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

Gardeners, Beatrice Slevin-Trigo

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

Eternity, Leah R. Sisk

Journal of Religion & Film

This film review of Eternity was developed from an essay on how the film demonstrates the nature of choice, including William James's notion of a leap of faith.  The original essay was submitted for an undergraduate Philosophy and Religion class on American Pragmatism at Western Carolina University.

Disclosure Day, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Disclosure Day (2026), directed by Steven Spielberg.

Misread Before Being Known: Race, Religion, And Institutional Non-Inquiry In Abrogation, Franklin Livingston

Journal of Religion & Film

Institutions often arrive at certainty before they arrive at knowledge. This article names that mechanism institutional non-inquiry — the organizational habit through which visual and cultural assumptions substitute for direct verification, allowing identity classifications to solidify before the subject meaningfully enters the encounter. Unlike prejudice, racialization, or established theories of pre-reflexive social perception, institutional non-inquiry isolates the organizational encounter itself as the specific procedural moment at which collective interpretive habits make inquiry feel unnecessary. Examining Abrogation (2024), a micro-budget American independent feature following Daud Khan, a Brown Pakistani-American infectious disease specialist whose movement through evangelical, civic, and federal institutions repeatedly …

Moving On: Purgatorial Seriality And Unanswered Prayer In Lost’S “Ab Aeterno”, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

“Ab Aeterno” (Lost, 6.09) distills the series’ religious logic with unusual explicitness by staging theodicy not as doctrine but as narrative procedure. This article argues that the episode converts Catholic sacramental form (confession, absolution, and penitential address) into a serial ethics of endurance in which closure is structurally deferred. Richard Alpert’s confession establishes a subject who seeks an authorized word that would stabilize suffering, yet the priest’s refusal (“I can’t”) installs a theology of unanswered prayer that becomes the template for Richard’s long durée of waiting. Jacob’s “cork” parable then supplies a katechontic justification of restraint: evil is not abolished …

A Metaphorical Passage To God: Simone Weil And Robert Bresson, V. G. Voigt Hogg Phd

Journal of Religion & Film

VOIGT HOGG_Abstract (REVISED)_Journal of Religion & Film_30 April 2026

This article contrasts the metaphysical and religious philosopher Simone Weil’s concepts of attachment and detachment with auteur director Robert Bresson’s method of subtraction. It argues for a commonality in their philosophy and cinema, that guides the reader or viewer respectively, to perceive a metaphorical passage to God through the lived experience of suffering. The article considers by what means does Weil and Bresson share a mutual commitment to understanding the state of the soul in affliction, while also acknowledging an opposition in the interpretation of detachment in relation to suicide. The …

Documenting The Ineffable: A Comparative Analysis Of Mystical Representation In Kimiavi’S The Garden Of Stones And Western Sufi Documentary, Hessam Abedini

Journal of Religion & Film

This article examines how documentary film attempts to represent mystical experience through comparative analysis of Parviz Kimiavi's The Garden of Stones (1976) and American documentaries featuring Samuel Lewis, particularly Sunseed (1973). Rather than assuming terms like "sacred" or "authentic," the study grounds its analysis in empirical definitions from William James, historical scholarship by Carl Ernst and Annemarie Schimmel, and literary theory from Fatemeh Keshavarz. Through detailed examination of specific scenes—Darvish Khan hanging stones from dead trees, Lewis leading ecstatic dances—the article demonstrates how different cinematic strategies approach documentary's epistemological limits when confronting ineffable experience.

The analysis corrects historical misunderstandings about …

On Black Speculative Feminisms: Memory And Liberated Futures In Black Women’S Fiction, Aisha Matthews

Criticism

Black Speculative Feminisms: Memory and Liberated Futures in Black Women’s Fiction by Cassandra L. Jones. Ohio State University Press, 2024. $29.95 paperback

On Monstrous Work & Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation, Courtney Thorsson

Criticism

Review of Monstrous Work & Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation by Eve Dunbar.

Maximizing The Use Of Interpreters In Shortterm Medical Missions, Barbara L. Loach

Great Commission Research Journal

In the debate over the effectiveness of short-term medical missions (STMM), the role of interpreters has received cursory attention. However, the perceived quality of care and the actual care that patients receive, and therefore their receptivity to the organization and the presentation of the gospel by faith-based STMMs, hinges greatly on employing trained interpreters who can reliably communicate on behalf of all parties involved. Each barrier to cross-cultural communication —verbal, non-verbal, and cultural—can and should be addressed to have a successful mission outreach; providing adequate training for all participants in STMM, especially for interpreters, is critical to mediate the communication …

My Pilgrimage In The Growth Of The Church, Charles Van Engen

Great Commission Research Journal

I have lived a life invested in the growth of the church and forming leaders who would mobilize the church toward growth. I have sought to pay forward what others did for me. Born of missionary parents, I was raised in the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. From 1973 to 1985, my wife, Jean, and I served the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico in Chiapas, Mexico, in leadership formation, training evangelists, pastors, and teachers of rapidly growing churches. In 1981, I received a Ph.D. in missiology under Johannes Verkuyl at the Free University of Amsterdam. I taught Mission Theology …

Understanding Evangelism: Biblical Foundations, Historical Developments, And Contemporary Issues By J.D. Payne, D. A. Horton

Great Commission Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Eating Disorders & Meat Consumption: A Meta-Analytic Review, Urska Dobersek, Laurel Standiford-Reyes, Tyler Robinson, Alex Antony Edwin, Sarah Siebers

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In this meta-analytic review, we examined the current evidence on eating disorders in relation to meat consumption and meat abstention. We systematically searched six online databases in December 2025 for primary research on eating disorder-related variables in meat consumers and meat abstainers. Fifty-one studies with 55,984 participants (n_{meat consumers} = 44,282, n_{meat abstainers} = 9,751) met the inclusion/exclusion criteria. The outcomes were eating disorders and orthorexia nervosa. Meat consumption was associated with lower eating disorder (g = 0.20, 95% CI [0.08, 0.32], p = .001) and orthorexia nervosa symptomology (g = 0.47, 95% CI [0.33, …

Public Rhetoric And Private Strategy: The World Bank's Relationship With Mexico Through The 1980s Debt Crisis, Phillip Purcell

Holster Scholar Projects

This project investigates how the World Bank's relationship with Mexico changed through the 1980s debt crisis and whether the institution's internal assessments differed from its public presentation. Drawing on archival memoranda, correspondence, briefing papers, and publicly available reports, the study compares World Bank deliberations with official statements and publications. It demonstrates that examining these private and public records together provides a clearer understanding of how the Bank formulated policy, exercised influence over Mexico's economic strategy, and responded to the challenges of debt, adjustment, and reform. More broadly, the project contributes to understanding the role of international financial institutions in shaping …

Using Demographics And Psychographics To Advance The Great Commission: Lessons From The National Association Of Free Will Baptists, Edward E. Mooody Jr.

Great Commission Research Journal

For decades, marketers have used demographics and psychographics to engage different segments of the population. Psychographics refers to the study of people’s activities, interests, opinions, values, attitudes, and lifestyles to better understand and predict behavior beyond what can be learned from demographic characteristics alone (Demby, 1974; Wells & Tigert, 1971). This paper examines whether these strategies can be effectively adapted to advance the Great Commission. The practices of the early church, particularly those of the Apostle Paul, reflect principles that are consistent with contemporary demographic and psychographic analysis. In this paper, the process of using an approach to help churches …

Submission Guidelines

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Formed Together: A Value-Based Model Of Mutual Spiritual Formation For Pentecostal Pastors And Churches Under 500, W. T.A. Mcmillan

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Acts 20:28) is both a warning and an invitation. It insists that the pastor's inner life and the congregation's shared life cannot be pulled apart without doing damage to both. This dissertation grows out of that conviction and out of years of pastoral ministry in Pentecostal churches where the pressure to perform often overwhelms the slow work of being formed. It asks a simple but searching question: How do Assemblies of God pastors serving congregations under 500 in attendance understand the connection between their own spiritual health and the spiritual …

Handbook For Mindful Technical Writing: A Practical Guide For University Students And Professionals, Dawn Atkinson, Stacey Corbitt

Writing

Welcome to the Handbook for Mindful Technical Writing: A Practical Guide for University Students and Professionals. This handbook was developed to make advanced writing instruction more accessible, practical, and adaptable for a wide range of learners and professionals. Based on Atkinson and Corbitt’s Advanced Level Writing in the University Classroom and Beyond: Mindful Practices for Technical, Business, and Scientific Communication (2024), this new handbook has been created as a user-friendly, streamlined, and classroom-ready resource for students, instructors, and professionals in academic, technical, and workplace settings. This handbook is organized into four core units designed to meet the needs of diverse …

Intermediate College Writing: Building And Practicing Mindful Writing Skills, Dawn Atkinson, Stacey Corbitt

Writing

No abstract provided.

On Canvas: The Origins And Implications Of A Common Phrase, Kerr Houston

Art Inquiries

Why do modern art historians and conservators describe paintings executed on cloth in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as works on canvas, when late medieval and early Renaissance sources never do the same? This article answers that question by tracing and analyzing the evolution of canvas as a term in the history of painting. Until the late 1400s, it will be argued, the term canvas and its regional variants connoted coarse woven fabrics made of hemp that were associated with rugged, utilitarian needs and rural poverty—but not with painting. By contrast, artists and related texts relied on …

Front Matter, Art Inquiries, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Gustave Courbet: Realist And Rebel, Leopold Museum Vienna, Austria, Joyce Polistena

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Here Come The Brides: Sylvia Sleigh, Lawrence Alloway, And Hetty Remington, Andrew D. Hottle

Art Inquiries

Sylvia Sleigh (1916–2010), a Welsh-born artist who lived and worked in England before settling in the United States, is known primarily for her uninhibited portraits of nude men, many of which were painted in New York City during the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Over the last half-century, Sleigh’s male nudes have been both admired and derided for disrupting the conventional paradigm of the male artist and unclothed female model. Among them are Philip Golub Reclining (1971; private collection) and The Turkish Bath (1973; David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago), which were inspired by canonical …

On Stage: Startling Visibility, Operatic Drama, And George Tooker’S Un Ballo In Maschera, Alex Del Dago

Art Inquiries

As a part of its centennial advertising campaign, the Metropolitan Opera in New York commissioned the American figurative painter George Tooker (1920-2011) to create a fine art image inspired after Giuseppe Verdi’s 1859 opera, Un Ballo in Maschera. Within the artist's composition, themes around masquerading, skepticism, and surveillance arise, all of which are common threads within both Tooker’s and Verdi’s work. Primary questions that can be asked from looking at this type of subject matter include: who is truthfully themselves, who may be someone other than they initially say they are, and most importantly, how does the ambiguity of gendered …

Robert Indiana, Love, Biblical Authority, And American Art In The 1960s, David Mccarthy

Art Inquiries

Years before Robert Indiana suggested that his canonical LOVE paintings and sculptures carried erotic connotations, he was explicit in indicating that the series was to be understood as spiritual. In 1973, as the United States Postal Service issued some three hundred and thirty million stamps with his design, he specifically explained that the genesis of LOVE should be traced to his childhood training in Christian Science. Although scholars have certainly acknowledged this background, none, so far, have sufficiently addressed the actual foundational text of the faith, nor have they adequately addressed the evidence of Christian references found in the artist’s …

Adrienne L. Childs, Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure In European Decorative Arts, Brigid M. Boyle

Art Inquiries

Ornamental Blackness by Adrienne L. Childs offers the first comprehensive survey of European luxury and utilitarian objects that treat Black Africans as decorative motifs. Proceeding chronologically from the middle Baroque period to the late nineteenth century, Childs charts the initial production of racialized objects for royal courts and aristocratic households and their later dissemination to middle-class homes. Items such as furniture, light fixtures, clocks, tableware, porcelain figurines, and treasury objects became an apparatus for controlling and fetishizing Black bodies, reinforcing the idea of Black servitude as normal. Many of these objects were crafted from precious natural materials whose extraction and …

Engl 426: Editing And Production Workshop (Syllabus), Lytton Smith Ph.D.

School of Arts & Sciences

This syllabus was developed by SUNY Geneseo Professor Lytton Smith for the fall 2026 semester.

Course Learning Outcomes

1. Students will demonstrate knowledge of editing practices, including manuscript review and selection, and correspondence with contributors.
2. Students will show proficiency at a variety of practical aspects of publishing such as copyediting, proofreading, layout, creating advertising, and soliciting work from SUNY writers and artists.
3. Students will demonstrate knowledge of contemporary literary journals.
4. Students will show ability to work collaboratively.

Mindful Technical Writing: An Introduction To The Fundamentals, Dawn Atkinson, Stacey Corbitt

Writing

Welcome to Mindful Technical Writing: An Introduction to the Fundamentals, an open textbook designed for use in corequisite course pairings of developmental writing and introductory technical writing, or indeed in other lower-division college writing courses that focus on building study skills alongside effective workplace and academic writing skills. It offers a no-cost alternative to commercial products, combining practical guidance with interactive exercises and thoughtfully designed writing opportunities.

This textbook is organized into units, though its chapters are modular so that instructors can select and assign readings and exercises for their particular classes rather than be tied to a fixed route …