Tag: Pop Culture

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A Summer of Trek

July 2025 saw the release of a new book of academic essays on Star Trek. Second Star To the Right: Essays in Leadership in Star Trek (Vernon Press), edited by Jason A. Kaufman and Aaron M. Peterson, features 18 chapters reflecting on how Trek teaches us to lead with a strong, guiding vision for the future. My chapter in the book is called “No Room for Bigotry on the Bridge: Star Trek, DEI, and Cultural Competence” and reflects on Star Trek from the vantage point of 10 years teaching about the beauty of religious diversity and the importance of cultural competence to aspiring nursing students. You can check out the volume and pick up a copy here (or request it from your local academic or public library). Many thanks to the editors for including my chapter—and for their own high-minded leadership.

But 2025 was a summer of Trek for Central Ohio more broadly, as it happened, and I was fascinated to be a part of it. Through my excellent 501st Legion friend Tom Betti, I became aware that a new Trek exhibit would be temporarily installed at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio (DACO), located in downtown Lancaster at the Reese-Peters House, from May 31-August 31, 2025, titled “Star Trek & Worlds Beyond.” The exhibit of over 150 props, costumes and artifacts from the Trek universe(s) was a collaboration between DACO, the Paramount Archives (curator Randall Thropp), the Trumbull County Historical Society and the Museum of Science Fiction and Fantasy Arts, a new permanent collection planned in Warren, Ohio to house a huge donation from Modern Props’ John Zabrucky, some of which were on display.

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Rogue One and the Paschal Mystery

As this year’s holy week and Triduum celebrations commence, I’d like to repost an article I wrote for another blog in 2017, soon after the release of a film that is often named as the best of the new Star Wars films: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). Not only is this film in need of further attention here on Liturgy and Life, but the timing is good too: in the Great Paschal Triduum, Catholics celebrate the Paschal Mystery of Christ in a prolonged, three-day liturgy that begins on Holy Thursday, moves through the triumph of the cross on Good Friday and concludes at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday with the initiation of new members and a festive celebration of the Resurrection. A liturgist friend calls this three-day season (the shortest in the Church year) “Paschal-palooza,” and rightly so. During the Triduum, we Catholics perform the symbolically richest, most lavish rituals we have to glorify a God who saves us by sending his own son to show us what conformity to God’s will really means (spoiler alert: it’s death). Yet death does not have the last word, and we are sanctified by the saving power of Christ’s humility “to the point of death, even death on a Cross” (Phil. 2:8).

Rogue One always struck me as a film with a lot to teach us everyday people about the Paschal Mystery: the loving self-sacrifice that brings new life and new hope. In a 2023 “Actors on Actors” interview between Star Wars stars Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader) and Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Luna reflects that what makes Rogue One (and its excellent, must-watch Disney+ spin-off Andor) special is there are no Jedi—the magic is absent from this corner of the galaxy far, far away. The ordinary people of these stories must rely on themselves—and only themselves—to solve galactic problems. They are, Luna said, “simple, regular people doing extraordinary things.” Christ’s ultimate actions are meant to inspire and guide us in the same way: he was one of us—our brother, our friend. Being more like Christ does not mean learning magic or developing superpowers. It means learning to listen to and follow the will of God. Any simple, ordinary person can do it, but one must have faith, hope and—above all—love. These three gifts are exemplified by characters in Rogue One.

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The Invisibility Cloak and the Incarnation

Christmas in the Harry Potter saga is always special. In an already magical world, the Christmas scenes in Potter (always snowy!) bring a heightened sense of magic to the story, bordering on the religious. It’s telling that the story finally drops its first and only overt references to religion—two Christian scripture passages—on Christmas in the Godric’s Hollow churchyard scene in Deathly Hallows. Each and every Christmas, Harry somehow gets a glimpse of the type of hero he must become to solve the problem at hand, and that problem is always Voldemort: the problem of sin and death itself. Funnily enough, Christmas, in the Christian sense of salvation history, also manifests the hopeful beginnings of the solution to the problem of sin and death. This is no coincidence. At Christmas, Harry often receives important gifts to help him in his quest, just as humanity received the gift of Jesus Christ, the light of the world, to help and guide us on the way to eternal life. The gifts and lessons Harry receives every Christmas show him that his own heroism must be patterned after this same Christ in his incarnation: God who becomes human, to show us that true honor, true heroism and true godliness lie in humility and loving friendship. 

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New Video: Eucharistic Themes in the Potter Saga

This past weekend, over 100 Potter scholars from all over the world attended the 9th annual Harry Potter Academic Conference, hosted by Chestnut Hill College. The conference was a great success by all accounts, and now that it’s complete, I thought I’d share my conference offering: a digital paper on the way all the many food images in Harry Potter point to the Eucharist. Please enjoy this with a hot glass of butterbeer! (And if you have a recipe you like better, please post in the comments.)

Emily’s conference talk for the 2020 Harry Potter Academic Conference at Chestnut Hill College

Hope to see you (digitally or otherwise) at next year’s Chestnut Hill Harry Potter Academic Conference. Until then, let’s all try to manage the mischief, shall we?