I was extremely disappointed to read Margaret O’Brien Steinfels’ dismissal of the Pussy Riot “brouhaha” over at dotCommonweal, but perhaps not very surprised. (Tom wrote about PR’s “punk prayer” protest here back in April. This past Friday, PR was sentenced to two years in prison.)

I have very little to add to the critique offered by Bridget, a Ph.D. candidate at Notre Dame, in “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Become a Feminist” at Women in Theology. While acknowledging the legitimacy of critiquing Pussy Riot’s protest on tactical grounds, Bridget rightly flags O’Brien Steinfels’ language as “not merely critical [...] but dismissive and gendered”: (more…)

As Tom mentioned yesterday, this weekend I’ll be presenting a paper at the annual convention of the CTSA entitled “‘I’m a Human, Not a Statue’: Saints and Saintliness in the Church of Punk Rock.” (I’m pretty sure this will be the first time in the history of the CTSA that participants will be rocking out to a bit of Fugazi.) I hope to post excerpts or a summary from that paper here at R&T in the coming weeks.

On that same note of punk rock saints, yesterday CNN posted an interview with one of the patron saints of feminist punk, or Riot Grrrl, Kathleen Hanna who is known primarily for her role in the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Among other things, she discusses the emergence of Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, a new Le Tigre documentary, the state of feminist punk today, and how she coined the title of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Michael Iafrate
Parkersburg, WV; on the way to San Jose, CA
USA