Author Archives

• My Turn: A Femifesto by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on April 25, 2017 • ( 18 )

  

  It’s coming up on a year now that pretty much everything changed in my family’s life. My over twenty years of married life, up until last year around this time, our lives had been built around my husband’s job. John’s… Read More ›

• Do You Know Why We Are Marching? by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on January 31, 2017 • ( 22 )

  

  When we got into the car to go, I asked my twelve-year-old daughter, “Do you know why we are marching today?” “To protest Donald Trump?” she replied. I explained that some people may be going for that reason, but that… Read More ›

• Elegy for An Old Life Gone: A Feminist Says Goodbye to Football by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on September 10, 2016 • ( 26 )

  

  I married into your strange cadence A drumbeat that never felt natural All consuming was your intention But I protected pieces of myself from your designs And more pieces retrieved me As you showed me your true colors You were… Read More ›

• The Power of Love by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on April 26, 2016 • ( 24 )

  

  Love does not create powerful empires or concentrations of wealth or military might. Love is not what fuels the tanks of commerce or political clout or financial success. Many would say that love slows things down, mires us in complication…. Read More ›

• Blindness, Lethargy, and White Supremacy by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on January 29, 2016 • ( 15 )

  

  With Black History Month fast approaching, it is fitting to investigate the latest call to get rid of it. This investigation may seem futile to some feminists/womanists since we know denials of racism are part of life in white supremacy… Read More ›

• The Whence of the Isms of (the) U(nited)S(tates)… by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on July 29, 2015 • ( 15 )

  

  Thus, when enemies or friends Are seen to act improperly, Be calm and call to mind That everything arises from conditions. -Shantideva, Bodhicharyāvatāra The early Indian teacher, Shantideva, calls humanity to a deeper exploration of the people and situations we… Read More ›

• Safety and Vulnerability in a Dangerous and Fertile World: A Meditation on Incarnation

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on January 29, 2015 • ( 21 )

  

  Feeling safe again is often the healing and elusive aspiration of a person like me. I have been living with the deep and cellular residuum of sexual trauma for most of my life—over thirty of my going-on forty-six years. For… Read More ›

• Feminist Questions by Marcia W. Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on July 29, 2014 • ( 18 )

  

  “Do sports depend on gender stereotypes that prop up particular expressions of masculinity?” This question is just one of the defining quandaries of my new book, Touchdowns for Jesus and Other Signs of Apocalypse: Lifting the Veil on Big-Time Sports,… Read More ›

• The Tyranny of Obliviousness by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on April 29, 2014 • ( 8 )

  

  The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Michigan voter-determined ban on Affirmative Action in college admissions decisions is just the latest example of how white obliviousness suppresses America’s collective capacity to heal from the wounds of racism. This obliviousness (a dynamic… Read More ›

• A Sojourn in Antartica by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on January 29, 2014 • ( 12 )

  

  Ok, so it’s not Antarctica, it’s Indiana, but it sure feels like Antarctica lately. At least it’s what I figure Antarctica must feel like: bone chilling wind that can cause hypothermia and frost bite in a matter of minutes; everything… Read More ›

• A Poem About Sister Love by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on October 29, 2013 • ( 4 )

  

  A Poem:  Sister Love This post will never be complete it can only house the fragments, the remains of days at my sister’s hospital bed the vortex of medical labels “critically ill” “brain aneurism” the singular attention to fragile body… Read More ›

• Be-pistemology by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on July 30, 2013 • ( 16 )

  

  Epistemology—the study or theory of the nature and the ground of knowledge, particularly with respect to the limits and validity of knowledges and the sources of knowledge. Being—the qualities and characteristics that constitute conscious existence; a living thing.  I look… Read More ›

• Feminism and Football By Marcia W. Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on April 30, 2013 • ( 14 )

  

  “How did race and privilege affect the NCAA investigation of the football program at University of North Carolina?” This was the question a student posed to me recently when I gave a Skype lecture to a Sports Ethics class at… Read More ›

• Truth and Consequences–This Feminist’s Perspective? by Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on January 29, 2013 • ( 17 )

  

  In John’s Gospel, Pilate’s response to Jesus’ self-identification as the one who “came into the world to testify to the truth” is a simple question:  “What is truth?”  His question hangs in the air as he moves from that conversation… Read More ›

• The David Syndrome? By Marcia Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on November 17, 2012 • ( 16 )

  

  Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like we’re all in Junior High or High School again with the Petraeus scandal?  There is drama at every turn with boundaries crossed and accusations slung across every lunch table there… Read More ›

• Living Liminality: Of Thresholds and Dwelling Places by Marcia W. Mount Shoop

  By Marcia Mount Shoop on August 19, 2012 • ( 9 )

  

  Sometimes I think it happened gradually.  Other times it feels like sudden change.  Either way I find myself in an in-between space that is my life. With apologies to Victor Turner and his cultural anthropological appropriation of liminality as a… Read More ›