An Introduction
with a little Elvis, Punk Rock, and Soulsville...
Dear readers,
Hello and welcome to my little space here on Substack! I have so many new subscribers, so I want to take a few moments to introduce myself and this newsletter. But first I want to say THANK YOU for taking the time to look, read, and subscribe.
If you are a longtime subscriber, THANK YOU for sticking around! You might already know some of the things I will include in today’s newsletter. But you might just learn one or two new things…
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER:
The Empathetic Imagination was born out of my interest in the relationship between the arts and spiritual formation, particularly the cultivation of empathy –which also led to my book Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy). In this weekly newsletter, we will look at the connections between art, theology, and the hard work of being a loving, truthful human being.
As a FREE subscriber, you can read quite a few posts and get a taste of what I do. As a PAID subscriber (just $5 a month–literally the price of one fancy coffee), you can read ALL POSTS and join in on my lecture/discussion series. I have just completed a series on “Theology, Philosophy, and Film.” In September, I will start a new series called “The Christian Imagination.”
ABOUT ME (the short version)–scroll down for the longer, more interesting/ slightly wacky version):
My name is Mary W. McCampbell, and I currently live in Chattanooga TN. I have taught Literature and Humanities (film, philosophy, theory, pop culture) in higher education for over 20 years at various institutions, including Calvin University (Visiting Prof of English), Lee University (Associate Prof of Humanities). A native Tennessean, I completed my doctorate at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK); my research focused on the relationship between contemporary fiction, late capitalist culture, and the religious impulse. Since finishing my graduate degrees, I have focused more on writing about the relationship between empathy and art, as well as researching and writing on African American literature, the prophetic impulse, and justice issues.
You can find my public-facing writing in outlets such as Image Journal, The Curator, The Other Journal, Relevant, and Christianity Today. My academic publications include chapters or articles on contemporary fiction and popular culture in Isn’t it Ironic?: Irony in Contemporary Popular Culture, ASAP Journal, Spiritual Identities: Literature and the Post-Secular Imagination, and Jesmyn Ward: New Critical Essays.
I was the Summer 2014 Writer-in-Residence at L’Abri Fellowship in Greatham, England (pictured above!) and a 2018 Scholar-in-Residence at Regent Theological College in Vancouver, Canada.
ABOUT ME (the longer but still very incomplete version):
I grew up in Soulsville, USA.
Most people call Soulsville by its other name, Memphis. But my hometown is built on soul and barbecue. You can still smell the ribs and hear the Blues when walking downtown between Beale Street and The Orpheum Theater with the Mighty Mississippi to your right.
The Elvis Part:
To most older Memphians, it is not too much of a surprise that my mother knew Elvis. As she tells me, “Mary, everyone knew Elvis!”. He was a local kid, the Midsouth’s own: born in Tupelo, moved to Memphis, played gigs around the tri-state area. She first met him because my grandmother hired him to play at Forrest City High School for a civic club fundraiser. The date was Nov. 14th, 1955. My mother was there, screaming in the crowd along with her peers. She got her photo taken with Elvis on the football field. She remembers his orange cashmere jacket and his Southern kindness. The photo is long gone, the result of a mugging that happened right at our backdoor (that’s another story!). For now, this is the only known remaining photo of that night:
My grandmother hired Elvis to play again the next summer for another fundraiser. But after that, he was too famous for these small performances. My mom had multiple other Elvis encounters after that, and she even lived with a woman who dated one of the members of the “Memphis Mafia” (Elvis’s main group of protectors and friends).
Why am I telling you this?
Beside the fact that I still love Elvis (here’s my favorite Elvis song–and The Smiths’ cover of it), it is also representative of my interest in the way the arts are intertwined with and so formative within our own personal narratives.
From a very young age, I loved reading, television, and music–all of these things both simultaneously transported me to another place and made me feel more myself.
PUNK ROCK:
In my public high school, I gravitated away from the popular kids (football players and cheerleaders were, of course, at the top of our cultural hierarchy). I distinctly remember coming back to school after Christmas break (January 1987, I believe) and seeing my good friend R. dressed all in Black carrying a spray-painted black metal lunchbox for a purse. On the “purse,” she had placed a skull sticker that said “The Misfits” on it. Thus began my introduction to the world of punk rock and hardcore. Years later, I began to piece together why I was so drawn to this scene and why I loved to spent evenings in the dirty, sweaty, chaotic Antenna club.
Here is an excerpt from article that I wrote for Christ & Pop Culture years ago about the relationship between my love of punk rock–both the music and the scene–and my Christian faith:
“During my high school years, I sometimes felt convicted that I had one foot in each of the two main camps—the church and the world. More specifically, the world of the Antenna club, a place where I felt almost as much at home as I did in the church. Although I was in youth group every Sunday night, I was often in the gritty, grimy, beer-soaked darkness of the Antenna club seeing 7 Seconds, Bikini Kill, and a host of national or local hardcore and punk bands on weekend nights (I went for the music and scene but never had a drop of alcohol). I was always trying to bring these seemingly “sacred and secular” worlds together. Although some of the sweet scented church folk I knew were afraid of, mocking toward, or actively condemned a punk rock aesthetic and praxis, I always felt that there was some deeper, more human connection that they were missing—even though I could not exactly name it.
The punk “family” created a safe space for lament (often disguised as anger) and audible, visible testimonies of often unspoken painful realities.When I was a part of (what my friends called) “the scene” in the late eighties—comprised of skaters, punks, artists, straight-edgers, and perhaps even a few metal heads—something was very poignant and real about the way my friends highlighted the jagged edges of life without trying to smooth them over.”
You can read the rest of that article HERE.
AN ONGOING EDUCATION:
These early formative experiences really fed into who I became and who I still am. As you can see, I have a deep love of music. But I have an equally deep love for literature, film, and art in general. And my deepest interest is to find the connections between the big theological questions of life and the art that often prophetically scrapes up against a spiritual reality that we choose to ignore. I was deeply influenced by my time as a student at Covenant College and at L’Abri Fellowship. Because of these influences (and so many others), I have continued to write, teach, and speak about these main points:
Engaging with good art can help us to see ourselves more clearly.
Engaging with good art can help us to love our neighbors more deeply. Sorry to mention it again–I wrote a book on this topic!
As a Christian, I believe that all humans are made in the Image of God and have the capacity to speak, create, and engage with truth. In good art, we can find these truths, what theologians call “common grace insights.”
Art and artists can serve prophetic functions as they disclose the painful truths that are so often hidden. Good art can be a tool of critique, deconstructing a false facade. But does it reconstruct anything in the place of the leveling? I highly recommend Walter Brueggemann’s classic The Prophetic Imagination when considering these questions. My next book will–Lord willing–be on this topic.
The art that we read, view, watch can be a boon or hindrance to our own spiritual formation. I like to focus on the ways that art can grow–rather than constrict–our imaginations in the direction of love.
A MAIN RESEARCH FOCUS THAT BECAME REAL LIFE:
One artist/ author whose work exemplifies so much of what I have listed above is the Canadian author and artist, Douglas Coupland (1962-). His most famous novel is 1989’s Generation X; it coined the sociological term for popular usage. My doctoral dissertation places Coupland’s understanding of “apocalypse” and “epiphany” alongside the writing of some of his contemporaries, including Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, Don DeLillo, Martin Amis. Coupland’s writing is witty, very enjoyable, and deceptively easy to read. Only after rereading several of his novels did I begin to see their complexity, especially on theological topics, including the search for God in a post-God culture. HERE is a favorite piece of mine on Coupland that I wrote for Image Journal–a hybrid article that works as a memoir, an interview, and an analytical essay.
I have been able to spend a lot of time chatting and visiting with Coupland, and I am thankful that he has become a friend (photo above!). And I am delighted that I am co-editing the first collection of academic essays on Coupland with Dr. Andrew Tate and Dr. Diletta De Cristofaro (you can see the three of us chatting with Coupland below):
This has been a very long newsletter–all about me. How self-indulgent! And I have not even told you about winning my sixth grade talent show by clogging to Michael Jackson’s “PYT.” But I digress…
You can find a lot of my writing, speaking, podcast episodes, etc. on MY WEBSITE (although it REALLY needs updating). Here are some of my faves from around the web:
ARTICLES:
How The Handmaid’s Tale’s Twisted Theology Reflects America’s Sins
Narratives of Disembodiment: How Ghost Stories Teach Us About Trauma
Reimagining Racial Justice: Shakespeare, Douglass, and the Visibility of the Imago Dei
“Stop Working Me:” Jesse Pinkman as Child-Prophet in Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad
SPEAKING:
“Let Justice Roll Down:” MLK and the Black Lives Matter Movement
Guns, Grit, and Grace: Flannery O’Connor & the Sin of Sentimentality
Prophetic Deconstruction?: Literary Critiques of Cultural Christianity
MOST RECENT PODCAST APPEARANCE:
Be.Make.Do. Podcast: Empathetic Imagination with Mary McCampbell
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT MY BOOK (with Karen Swallow Prior, Makoto Fujimura, Bekah Mason, and others):
Eleven Conversations on Empathy
THANK YOU again for reading! Hope you will stick around!
This is probably the best introduction I've ever read!
🎉🎉🎉