Author: The Editors

Gun Culture Supremacy: The cultural shift of gun ownership and the rise of political violence in the United States

By Stefanie Wallbraun Political violence in the United States has increased sharply over the past decade. Aggravated by populist actors such as Donald Trump, a political climate has developed that is characterized by polarizing language, dehumanization of the opposition, and the propagation of crisis narratives. Political actors accuse the opposition…

Fan Studies: “You can do a PhD on that?!”

By Christina Wurst Why study (Anglophone) fan cultures? When you mention that you are writing a PhD on fan cultures, people’s first question is often “You can do a PhD on that?”. The term ‘fans’ typically calls to mind screaming girls at a boy band concert, football fans going on…

Can (Mega) Philanthropy Cure the World? Global Health, HIV/AIDS and the Gates Foundation

by Swetha Ananth and Natalie Rauscher Can (mega) philanthropy cure the world? In an attempt to answer this complex question, this article will offer a glimpse into the world of mega philanthropy, focusing on global health and more specifically on the area of Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS)-related efforts.…

James W.C. Pennington: Freedman, Scholar, Abolitionist

by Caitlin Smith As the 1834 fall term began, eager seminary students poured into the lecture halls of Yale Theological Seminary. They brought high expectations and keen hopes for their education. Yale College had already distinguished itself as one of most prestigious centers of learning in early America. And, for…

Dungeons & Dragons between Community and Commercialization

by Jula Maasböl Within the last decade, Dungeons & Dragons has turned from a relatively niche hobby that few people were aware of to a vastly popular game with renewed cult status. Helped along by the publication of a more accessible rule system with Dungeons & Dragons’ 5th Edition in…

The Founding Fathers are Back from the Dead: 19th-Century Spiritualism and the American Civil Religion

By E. H. Messamore The 4th of July brings with it the usual paeans to the foundational principles of the republic along with affirmations of its special destiny. Independence Day represents the holiest day in what sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 dubbed America’s civil religion—a trans-denominational sanctification of the symbols,…

The Confinement of Outer Space

By Annika Elstermann To begin, let us look towards the stars. Culturally, the firmament has always held a fascination for writers and audiences, not just in a mystical sense, but also as a place which exists and which might be reached, traversed, visited, explored, but which is as yet uncharted.…

The Confinement of Outer Space

By Annika Elstermann To begin, let us look towards the stars. Culturally, the firmament has always held a fascination for writers and audiences, not just in a mystical sense, but also as a place which exists and which might be reached, traversed, visited, explored, but which is as yet uncharted.…

“What a nun is supposed to be”: Black Power and the National Black Sisters’ Conference

by Venus Bender In his 1971 speech “On the Relevance of the Church” at the Theological Union in Berkeley, California, the Black Power activist Huey P. Newton referred to the church as an essential institution for building a Black community after both the church and the Black Panther Party had…

Crime, Class, and the City: Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle (2021)

by Valentina Lopez Liendo Where do you go as a writer after being awarded back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes? Somewhere where you “get to be funny again,” as Colson Whitehead states (Feldman 2021). In his last two novels, Whitehead explored the horrors of slavery in Underground Railroad and the traumatic violence of…

Crime, Class, and the City: Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle (2021)

by Valentina Lopez Liendo Where do you go as a writer after being awarded back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes? Somewhere where you “get to be funny again,” as Colson Whitehead states (Feldman 2021). In his last two novels, Whitehead explored the horrors of slavery in Underground Railroad and the traumatic violence of…

Collision Course: Don’t Look Up and the Politicization of Science in America

By David F. Eisler On last Christmas Eve, Netflix released the star-studded satirical disaster movie Don’t Look Up about two American astrophysicists named Dr. Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) who face ignorance, apathy, and political hostility as they attempt to persuade the government…

Civil Rights & Civil Wrongs

How the Right Responded and Responds to Demands by Civil Rights Activists[i] By Georg Wolff In an academia where fetishized innovation breeds sensationalist mediocrity, where ‘new’ and ‘good’ are used interchangeably, it is a rare occurrence that a historiographic work achieves the appropriate half-life to be considered a true classic.…

Breaking the Silence – #MeToo and the Reclaiming of the Feminist Framing of Sexual Harassment

By Nicole Colaianni In December 2017, Time magazine named “The Silence Breakers” as Person of the Year. It was the first time the magazine honored a group instead of just one person with the title. The magazine’s intention was to both celebrate these women (and some men) as individuals as…
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