When Congressman Robert Garcia was sworn into office in January 2023 on the US Constitution he didn’t have the Bible or any other sacred text with him. Not that it was required to have one. As per Article VI, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, there is no official requirement to be sworn in on a religious text for the Oath of Office: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” But, in a sense, he did have a sacred text with him: a copy of Superman (vol. 1) #1 (published by National Comics/Dc Comics, cover date June 1939) borrowed from the Library of Congress.
Read moreLigurian Dreams
The gods had a dream, and the dream’s name was Liguria. Dolceacqua (Liguria, Italy). 2023 Leonardo Ambasciano (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
When I was young, there was always something missing in me.
Everywhere I went, I felt like I didn’t belong, like I couldn’t belong. My father left his seaside hometown in Liguria for Turin, a huge industrial city at the foothills of the Alps, in the 1970s, and from there he went abroad in the 1980s. When I was three years old my family decided to come back to Turin but, by that time, my father had already started globetrotting for work. We started spending give or take half a year in Turin and half a year in Liguria, some time in my father’s seaside town and some time in my mother’s mountain village.
Read moreThe toxic legacy of Michael Crichton
“I’m telling you, this is the way modern society works – by the constant creation of fear.” The cover of Michael Crichton’s fourteenth novel, State of Fear (2004), courtesy of my local library. London: HarperCollins (cit. from Prof. Hoffman’s tirade on p. 456).
When Crichton addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1999, he gaslighted the scientific community by saying that stereotypical portrayals of mad scientists and other negative tropes in the movies were absolutely normal (“Since all occupations are portrayed negatively, why expect scientists to be treated differently?”).
Read moreThe End of the (Jurassic) World
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs!? Nope, wrong franchise. Jurassic World release poster (2015). © Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment, Inc. Source: IMP.
When a graduate student of Stephen Jay Gould went to the movies to watch Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster tentpole Jurassic Park in 1993, he lamented that the animals depicted in the movie – in particular the Velociraptor, called raptors – were “the same old, ordinary, dinosaur shit-green” (Gould 1996: 230). When Gould reported his student’s colourful impressions in a studious review of the movie, he duly noted that Spielberg tried to experiment “in early plans and models” with the “bright colors” you would expect in a birdlike animal evolutionarily closer to birds than lizards and other reptiles. However, in the end the production team decided to revert to dull, dated, and monochromatic reptilian hues (Gould 1996: 230). They had already renounced the hissing serpent-like tongue for the raptors featured in the first shooting tests for the kitchen attack sequence – and that was quite enough, thank you very much.
Read moreA Riposte to James C. Ungureanu’s Review of “An Unnatural History of Religions” (2019)
Some remarkable works published by Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Personal collection. (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Leonardo Ambasciano.
James Ungureanu has recently published a peculiar review of my book An Unnatural History of Religions in the March 2022 issue of Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society. At the very beginning of his contribution, Ungureanu claims that I was “upset” when I “bemoan[ed] rather petulantly” (sic), “lamented”, and “artlessly proclaim[ed in my book my] deepest convictions”, that is, some Lapalissian statements that are part of the current scientific consensus and are directed against pseudohistorical assertions and neocreationist, esotericist, and spiritualist dogmas that characterise the past, and to some extent the present, of the academic field known as History of Religions. I was certainly not “upset” when I wrote the uncontroversial lines that managed to provoke such a defensive reaction in the reviewer. However, being “upset” is exactly the emotional state I was in after reading Ungureanu’s review.
Read moreA Historian’s Homage to Spider-Man
Fig. 1. A selection of Spider-Man masks, 1963-2011. Unskillfully retraced after the original artworks by Leonardo Ambasciano. Sources and authors listed in the Appendix. Fair use disclaimer: the images are used as the irreplaceable source of data discussed in the article for academic purposes. Spider-Man™ © 2022 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In 1979, palaeontologist and historian of science extraordinaire Stephen J. Gould (1941-2002) published a thought-provoking cultural evolutionary analysis dedicated to Mickey Mouse. In 2013, I tried to replicate his results with Spider-Man, and now, nine years too late and a whopping forty-three years after Gould’s groundbreaking essay, I’m finally able to present my efforts in English. Here goes nothing!
Read moreMy J. Z. Smith is a pheneticist (sort of)
“Linnaeus gave us a way of talking about the diversity of grasses” (Jonathan Z. Smith in Sinhababu 2008). Title page of the 10th edition of Systema naturæ (1758) by Carl Linnaeus. Göttingen State and University Library, signature <8 H NAT I, 7105 <10>:1>. Source: Wikipedia.
In late 2018, less than a year after historian of religion extraordinaire Jonathan Z. Smith had passed away, I submitted an abstract to an interesting conference organized by the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, entitled “When the Chips are Down,” It’s Time to Pick Them Up: Thinking With Jonathan Z. Smith. This post tentatively provides an account of what I might have come up with provided that my submission were accepted (which, alas, was not).
Read moreThe Riviera Strikes Back
Liguria is not a place on Earth. It’s a state of mind. Portofino (Liguria, Italy). 2022 Leonardo Ambasciano (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Our Last JCH Editorial
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/index © Equinox
All good things must come to an end.
Read moreMy Riviera
Going to the seaside? Or trekking through mountains? You don’t have to choose here, you can have both! The Church of S. Anna ai Monti with the Gallinara Island in the background, as seen from Via Julia Augusta, between Albenga and Alassio (Liguria, Italy). 2021 Leonardo Ambasciano (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
This is the visual story of how an Autumn road trip through the Italian region where my family comes from helped me clear my mind after experiencing the most hellish situation at home.
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