Video documentation of Jean Franco's keynote address, The Second Coming: Religion as Entertainment, presented as a part of the 4th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, celebrated in July of 2003 in New York City, United States under the title Spectacles of Religiosities.

Everywhere secularism is in retreat. Not only are fundamentalists on the rise but also many competing brands of spirituality are now widely disseminated through media, film, best selling fiction and television. While most orthodox religions have always used ritual and performance, telecommunications and televisual effects are transforming religion into religiosity. "The return of religion" has become an issue. Jean Franco is currently Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. She is the winner of the PEN 1996 award for lifetime contribution to the dissemination of Latin American literature in English and has been recognized by the Chilean and Venezuelan governments for advanced scholarship on Latin American literature in the United States.