Jeremy Biles

Jeremy Biles, PhD, teaches courses on “ulterior religions,” philosophy, dreams, monsters, and photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of Ecce Monstrum: Georges Bataille and the Sacrifice of Form (Fordham University Press, 2007) and co-editor (with Kent Brintnall) of Negative Ecstasies: Georges Bataille and the Study of Religion (Fordham, 2015). He is also the short reviews editor for the Religious Studies Review.

Articles

Religion Dispatches

Captain America: Civil Religion (And Why Donald Trump Thinks He's Batman)

As of this writing, Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War is 2016’s biggest movie worldwide. If pop culture is our public religion (as per scholar David Chidester, for example) this blockbuster…

Jeremy Biles

May 20, 2016

Article

Religion Dispatches

Picasso’s Sacred Monster Eats Chicago: A Mystery Solved?

What does this mysterious sculpture depict? Popular answers include: an aardvark, a bird, an Afghan hound, and one of Picasso’s lovers. But to my eyes, it looks like a sphinx—a monster that (like the anamorphic skull haunting Hans Holbein’s famous painting The Ambassadors) only snaps into focus when viewed from an oblique perspective. To perceive the recumbent sphinx you have to approach the piece not from the front but from behind and to the side.

Jeremy Biles

September 14, 2011

Article

Religion Dispatches

The Scandal of the Cross

It’s Easter weekend, and French vandals armed with hammers have given further reason for contemplating the crucifixion, or at least its representation.

Jeremy Biles

April 22, 2011

Article