popular culture

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/28/2020
  

  Seven ‘Twilight Zone’ Episodes that are Eerily Timely During the Coronavirus Pandemic

  Some “Twilight Zone” stories are especially relevant to life under self-quarantine, and some episodes of the classic series can be a diverting emotional escape.

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• 3/27/2020
  

  DC Comics and the American Dilemma of Race

  by Patrick L. Hamilton and Allan W. Austin

  Superhero popular culture has always been embedded within American racial attitudes, reflecting and even contributing to them in ways that reveal goodwill is not sufficient, in and of itself, to fix our problems.

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• 3/27/2020
  

  Filmmaking, Reality and Fact: How Documentaries Shape Americans' Ideas of Truth

  by Jon Wilkman

  A sizable percentage of Americans get their sense of history through television documentaries. The history of nonfiction filmmaking offers crucial insight on how we got to, and how we might escape, a "post-truth" world.

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  3/26/2020
  

  Babe Ruth's New York @ 100

  by Jonathan Goldman

  When Babe Ruth started hitting home runs, the US started to change.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  3/20/2020
  

  Assimilationists of a Feather

  by Elliot Friar and Travis LaCouter

  If the history of gay liberation has taught us anything, it’s that assimilationism is one hell of a drug.

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• SOURCE: NPR Codeswitch
  3/17/2020
  

  The Classist History Behind Bad Bunny's 'Bichiyal'

  The introduction of the term opened the floodgates for a debate about class, womanhood, and Puerto Rico's long history of reggaeton production.

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  3/8/2020
  

  Survivor-in-Chief?

  The 2020 election resembles nothing less than a political version of the Survivor franchise. Donald Trump fully intends to be the last man standing. To do so, however, he must contrive to get everyone else voted off the island. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  2/4/20
  

  Black Perspectives Hosts Online Forum on HBO’s Watchmen This Week

  by Ahmad Greene-Hayes

  The forum will offer pieces from scholars in African American religious studies who think critically about the show and its engagement with politics, performance, and African American religions in the early twentieth-century South, specifically in Tulsa, after the 1921 massacre.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/4/20
  

  What J-Lo and Shakira missed in their Super Bowl halftime show

  by Petra Rivera-Rideau

  Their performance perpetuated the marginalization of Afro-Latinos and other people of African descent.

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• SOURCE: Hollywood Progressive
  12/18/19
  

  Omens of the Trumpian Nightmare in Literature, Film, and Song

  by Walter G. Moss

  Like Soloviev’s anti-Christ, Sinclair Lewis’s President Buzz Windrip in It Can’t Happen Here (1935) is different than Trump in some ways—”Windrip was almost a dwarf”—but possesses significant characteristics that remind us of Trump. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/9/19
  

  The white nostalgia fueling the ‘Little Mermaid’ backlash

  by Brooke Newman

  The uproar over a black Ariel shows how important representation in children’s entertainment is.

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  7/9/19
  

  The World-Class Photography of Ebony and Jet Is Priceless History. It's Still Up For Sale.

  by Alison Miller

  The archive’s unquestionable historical value means there’s more than money at stake in the process of finding a new home for it.

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• 1/20/19
  

  R. Kelly and the Silencing of Black Women in History

  by Tikia K. Hamilton

  The artist's continued freedom leaves us to question the extent to which legal authorities and the wider public takes abuses against black women and girls seriously.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/27/18
  

  How TV shows use serious archaeology to promote bogus history

  by David S. Anderson

  With its dubious claims, “Legends of the Lost” sits amid a problematic world of television shows, books and websites that promote pseudoarchaeological claims that produce an image of the past that their authors wish to see, rather than one supported by the thorough analysis of all relevant information.

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• SOURCE: NOLA.com
  9-25-13
  

  '12 Years a Slave' prompts effort to recognize efforts of Joseph Logsdon in reviving tale

  Logsdon shares credit with Sue Eakins, who is the more widely-cited expert in the media.