In this special mega edition of Shoptalk, guess which performative utterance was said at which conference.
Tag: American Studies
Public Thinker: Imani Perry on How to Understand “Souths Plural”
“At the end of the day, the America project was about an encounter with abundance that was responded to with greed and brutality.”
Refuge: Denied. Asylum: Pending
The United States originates in settler colonialism, slavery, empire, and a long history of giving refuge to some while refusing refuge to others.
Choosing Empire: America before and after World War II
Both America First nationalism and postwar liberalism refuse to face the challenges of the globalized world that America itself inaugurated.
Philanthropy and the “Jewish Continuity Crisis”
Today, Jewish philanthropy—like all philanthropy—is big business, thanks to US philanthropy’s torturous entanglement with US capitalism.
What Does a “Click” Count For?
In the digital world, metrics mean everything. But who interprets just what they mean changes across organizations, countries, and cultures.
As American as Child Separation
The United States tears families apart—during slavery, in the wars against indigenous people and the war on drugs, and, today, at the border.
The Arch of Injustice
St. Louis seems to define America’s past—but does it offer insight for the future?
A Communism of Feelings
What role should emotions play in leftist political movements?
Shoptalk: Overheard at ASA 2019
This year’s American Studies Association annual meeting took place November 7–10 in Honolulu, Hawai’i. ASA President, Scott Kurashige, transformed this year’s ...
A Just Future for Cycling?
I occupy three precarious categories: South Florida resident, humanities professor, and cyclist. The last, however, is a condition afforded to me because of ...
Borders, Guns, and Freedom
Like the pioneers two hundred years before him, Mark Romano recently decided to head West. Like those pioneers, Mark—a white, unemployed electrician ...
Another Mormon Education
The first sentence Tara Westover writes in her engrossing memoir Educated is a disclaimer: “This story is not about Mormonism.” This is true in the same ...
A Black Counternarrative
Master narratives become the background music of our lives, undercurrents so ingrained that the violence they often engender is rendered unremarkable. One master narrative is the tale we tell about ...
What the Constitution Means to Us
On June 22, 1999, Jessica Lenahan’s estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, abducted their three daughters from outside Jessica’s house, in Castle Rock ...
Public Thinker: Thomas J. Sugrue on History’s Hard Lessons
From producing towering classics in the field of urban history to penning ...
B-Sides: Chaucer’s “The House of Fame”
For years, and with particular intensity since the 2015 Dylann Roof shooting and 2016 election, we have debated the fate of not only Confederate monuments but ...
“Hamilton”: Who Tells Your Story?
Hamilton: An American Musical, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, achieved an unusual degree of cultural cachet almost immediately upon its 2015 Broadway ...
“Caste, Class, and Race” @70
As we pass the 70th anniversary of Trinidadian American sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox’s Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics, his message ...
America Learns What Russia Knew
How to tell a story always matters enormously. This already urgent task takes on added dimensions and gravity when the story itself is about information ...