Blog Judging King Kong by its Cover: The Aping of Beauty When visitors enter the museum at Wheaton College’s Marion E. Wade Center, which archives work…Crystal L. DowningNovember 17, 2021
Blog Finding the Word in a Liberal Arts Manger: This Shall Be a Sign for You For my Bible reading this year, I am using the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible…Crystal L. DowningSeptember 15, 2021
Blog Theo-Drama and Mise-en-Scéne In my current book project, The Wages of Cinema: Looking through the Lens of Dorothy…Crystal L. DowningJune 28, 2021
Blog The Fortress of Christian Higher Education Decades ago, when I informed an acquaintance that I had accepted a tenure-track position at…Crystal L. DowningJune 10, 2021
Blog Academic Freedom: From Ram-skit to Bull-dung My first lesson in academic freedom came not long after completing my Ph.D., at which…Crystal L. DowningMay 14, 2021
Blog The Betrayal of Certitude A Christian liberal arts education should undermine certitude: something I learned from Dorothy L. Sayers,…Crystal L. DowningApril 12, 2021
Blog Amputating the Liberal Arts As theaters, museums, and concert halls struggle during these covidious times, I worry about the…Crystal L. DowningMarch 22, 2021
Blog Cinema: In the Beginning Related to kinesis, Greek for movement, the word cinema resonates with the beginnings described at…Crystal L. DowningFebruary 22, 2021
Blog January 6 and the Fixation of Belief I imagine that most of us are looking through the binocular lenses of scholarly specialization…Crystal L. DowningJanuary 26, 2021
Blog Shocking Our Socks off the Mantle Annoyed by plump plastic Santas perched on suburban lawns, I was suddenly struck by the…Crystal L. DowningDecember 14, 2020
Blog Aiming for Abnormality During the 1992 election, James Carville coined an infamous aphorism: “It’s the economy, stupid!” I…Crystal L. DowningNovember 18, 2020
Blog Naughty Gnosticism and Film Scholarship I ended my last post suggesting “the relevance of cinema to Christian orthodoxy.” What exactly…Crystal L. DowningOctober 26, 2020
Blog Toward a Christian Film Aesthetic As co-director of the Marion E. Wade Center, the world’s most comprehensive archive of books and…Crystal L. DowningSeptember 14, 2020
Reviews Reforming Hollywood: How American Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies Reviewed by Crystal Downing, English and Film Studies, Messiah College Several years ago I began…Crystal L. DowningJuly 15, 2013
Review Essays Strange Bedfellows: Faith and Film—A Review Essay My education in film came in my 20s when a friend named Paul recognized our…Crystal L. DowningJuly 15, 2011