Christopher B. Zeichmann's Blog

September and October have been so much fun – there was a fantastic book launch for Radical Antiquity at Type Books here in Toronto and I’ve got another book event coming up soon at The Spaniel’s Tale.

In the meantime, I’ve also been on a couple of other podcasts to talk about the book! Ancient Office Hours was kind enough to have me on to talk about the book, as was Last Born in the Wilderness.

For those interested, I’ve done some more social media appearances.

You can check out this interview I did with Greg Soden for his “Classical Ideas” podcast. It is also on Spotify and other streaming services.

I also recently did a public lecture for the University of Toronto’s alumni week and that lecture has been posted online. This lecture was an effort to think about radical forms of democracy in antiquity and what they might have to offer us today (especially in Canada).

I’ll be trying to update this site a bit more and one thing I have completely neglected on this site is to take note of my media appearances and public scholarship. If you want some more Chris Zeichmann content, here’s a great place for it!

Podcast interview: Biblical Time Machine – Did Jesus ‘Bless’ a Same-Sex Relationship?

Interviewed expert: Task & Purpose – This Roman Soldier’s 1,900-Year-Old Payslip Confirms the Green Weenie Is Immortal

Public writing:
– Bible Odyssey – Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum
– Shiloh Project – A Centurion and His ‘Lover’: A Text of Queer Terror

The new issue of Bible and Critical Theory not only has a new article I wrote about the Triumphal Entry in Mark’s Gospel, but also a review of my book by Robert Myles! Check them out!

A new review of my book was published in Journal for the Study of the New Testament and was quite positive! “Zeichmann’s well-written and engaging study of the Roman military throughout the NT is both illuminating and provocative.” That’s one heck of an opening sentence!

Gary W. Burnett, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 41/5 (2019): 17.

For those interested, an article I co-authored with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio was recently published in Scripta Classica Israelica: Where Were the Romans and What Did They Know? Military and Intelligence Networks as a Probable Factor in Jesus of Nazareth’s Fate. Here is the abstract, for those interested:

In the wake of the Gospels’ accounts, modern scholars do not pay much attention to the role Romans played in Jesus of Nazareth’s arrest, and are prone to give credit to manifestly biased sources. Besides, some misconceptions (e.g. that the military in pre-War Judaea was exclusively confined to its largest cities) prevent them from seriously weighing up the possibility that the role of the Romans in Jesus’ fate was more decisive than usually recognized. In this article, we reconsider a number of issues in order to shed light on this murky topic. First, the nature and functions of the Roman military in Judaea are surveyed (for instance, Palestine before the Jewish War had a robust network of fortlets and fortresses, which Benjamin Isaac has argued largely served to facilitate communication into the hinterlands). Second, we track some traces of anti-Roman resistance in the prefects’ period (6-41 CE), Third, the widely overlooked issue of the intelligence sources available to Roman governors is tackled. Fourth, the extent of the problems of the Passion accounts is seriously taken into account. The insights obtained are then applied to the Gospels’ story, thereby rendering it likely that Pilate had some degree of “intelligence” regarding Jesus and his followers before their encounter in Jerusalem that led to the collective execution at Golgotha.

Finally, that very issue has a nice review of my book by the great scholar Oliver Stoll. For those that care to read it, it can be found here.

Robert Myles has posted the Table of Contents for an upcoming book to which I am contributing, Class Struggle in the New Testament which will be published by Fortress Academic/Lexington Press. The Table of Contents looks amazing!

Class Struggle in the New Testament! (Robert J. Myles)Jesus, the Temple, and the Crowd: A Way Less Traveled (Neil Elliott)Romans Go Home? The Military as a Site of Class Struggle in the Roman East and New Testament (Christopher B. Zeichmann)Peasant Plucking in Mark: Conceptual and Material Issues (Alan H. Cadwallader)IVDAEA DEVICTA: The Gospels as Imperial “Captive Literature” (Robyn Faith Walsh)Fishing for Entrepreneurs in the Sea of Galilee? Unmasking Neoliberal Ideology in Biblical Interpretation (Robert J. Myles)Hand of the Master: Of Slaveholders and the Slave-Relation (Roland Boer and Christina Petterson)Populist Features in the Gospel of Matthew (Bruce Worthington)Troubling the Retainer Class in Antiquity (Sarah E. Rollens)Rethinking Pauline Gift and Social Functions: Class Struggle in Early Christianity? (Taylor Weaver)The Origin of Archangels: Ideological Mystification of Nobility (Deane Galbraith)Christian Origins and the Specter of Class: Locating Class Struggle in the New Testament Today (James G. Crossley)

This page collects all links for my book chapter “X-Men Films and the Domestication of Dissent: Sexuality, Race, and Respectability”

Last updated: 30 July 2018

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Ahmed, Sara. 2004b. “Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-performativity of Anti-Racism.” borderlands 3/2: n.p. Available from http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm.

Brothers, David. 2013. Professor X Isn’t Martin Luther King, and Magneto Isn’t Malcolm X, Either. 4th Letter, 2013. Available from http://4thletter.net/2013/04/professor-x-isnt-martin-luther-king-and-magneto-isnt-malcolm-x-either/.

Brown, Michael. 2011. “Mutant” as a Codeword for “Gay” in the X-Men Movies. Townhall, 2011. Available from https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2011/11/03/mutant-as-a-codeword-for-gay-in-the-x-men-movies-n1216545.

Burrows, Cedric Dewayne. 2005. The Contemporary Rhetoric about Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X in the Post-Reagan Era. M.A. thesis, Miami University. Available from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=miami1118689456&disposition=inline.

Clark, P. Djèlí. 2015. On Malcolm, Martin and that X-Men Analogy Thing. The Musings of a Disgruntled Haradrim, 2015. Available from https://pdjeliclark.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/on-malcolm-martin-and-that-x-men-analogy-thing/.

Dussere, Erik. 2000. The Queer World of the X-Men. Salon, 2000. Available from https://www.salon.com/2000/07/12/x_men/.

Ealey, Shani. 2013. What “The Butler” Didn’t Reveal About The Black Panther Party. In Black Women Unchecked. Available from https://blackwomenunchecked.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/what-the-butler-didnt-reveal-about-the-black-panther-party/.

Evans, Angel. 2013. ‘The Butler’ Movie Review: New Film, Old Stereotypes. In Mic. Available from https://mic.com/articles/60669/the-butler-movie-review-new-film-old-stereotypes#.wGdEVP4Ij.

Godoski, Andrew. 2011. Professor X and Magneto: Allegories for Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, 2011. Available from http://www.screened.com/news/professor-x-and-magneto-allegories-for-martin-luther-king-jr-and-malcolm-x/2316/.

Goldstein, Hilary. 2006. “Xavier vs. Magneto: A Philosophical Debate. IGN.com, 2006. Available from http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/05/05/xavier-vs-magneto-a-philosophical-debate.

Independent Gay Forum. 1998. About IGF CultureWatch. Independent Gay Forum, 1998. Available from https://igfculturewatch.com/about/.

LaCapria, Kim. 2016. Chants Encounter. Snopes, 2016. Available from https://www.snopes.com/black-lives-matter-protesters-chant-for-dead-cops-now-in-baton-rouge/.

Lamb, J. 2013. Magneto Was Right. Nerds of Color, 2013. Available from https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2013/09/18/magneto-was-right/.

Lund, Martin. 2015. “The Mutant Problem: X-Men, Confirmation Bias, and the Methodology of Comics and Identity.” European Journal of American Studies 10/2: n.p. Available from https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10890.

Martin, Orion. 2013. What If the X-Men Were Black? The Hooded Utilitarian, 2013. Available from http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/12/what-if-the-x-men-were-black/.

Miller, Stephen H. 2016. Cop Lives Matter. Independent Gay Forum, 2016. Available from https://igfculturewatch.com/2016/07/08/cop-lives-matter/.

Nair, Yasmin. 2015a. The Gay Marriage Campaign Shamelessly Exploits Martin Luther King, 2015a. Available from http://yasminnair.net/content/gay-marriage-campaign-shamelessly-exploits-martin-luther-king.

———. 2015b. The Secret History of Gay Marriage, 2015b. Available from http://yasminnair.net/content/secret-history-gay-marriage.

Pulliam-Moore, Charles. 2017. It’s Time for the X-Men’s Stories About Discrimination to Evolve. io9, 2017. Available from https://io9.gizmodo.com/its-time-for-the-x-mens-stories-about-discrimination-to-1818715399.

Rose, Charlie. 2000. Bryan Singer. Charlie Rose, 2000. Available from https://charlierose.com/videos/3806.

Smith, Nigel M. 2015. Ian McKellen: ‘X-Men Was a Gay Man’s Delight, Because It Was Full of the Most Amazing Divas’ 2015. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/21/ian-mckellen-x-men-was-a-gay-mans-delight-because-it-was-full-of-the-most-amazing-divas.

Thompson, Chad. 2006. More than Mutants. Relevant, 2006. Available from  https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/film/features/3383-more-than-mutants.

Wheeler, Andrew. 2013. Avengers Assimilate: Identity Politics in ‘Uncanny Avengers’. In Comics Alliance. http://comicsalliance.com/uncanny-avengers-5-rick-remender-identity-politics-mutants/.

Yearwood, Smiley. 2015. For the Billionth Time, Magneto Is Not Malcolm X: Thoughts on Appropriation and Mutants of Color, 2015. Available from https://smileyyearwood.com/2015/09/11/for-the-billionth-time-magneto-is-not-malcolm-x-thoughts-on-appropriation-and-mutants-of-color/.

I wanted to alert any interested that an article I recently wrote for the magazine Ancient Warfare on Jesus and the Demon Named Legion (Mark 5:1-20) was published.

 

Others may be interested that my book is now available for pre-order on Rowman and Littlefield’s website.

For those interested, an advance version of my article for the journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion has been posted to the Brill website.