Feature Archives - Page 74 of 150

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Authenticity, American Style

The meaning of authenticity in the era of “reality show” politics

March 23, 2018 • by Jeremy Safran

In her 2012 book The Politics of Authenticity in American Presidential Campaigns, Erica Seifert documents the growing importance over a 25-year period of the voters’ perception of candidates’ authenticity in determining the outcome of presidential elections. In recent years Al Gore, John Kerry and Mitt Romney’s bids for the presidency were all ...

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Making Knowledge Available

The media of generous scholarship

March 22, 2018 • by Shannon Mattern

A few weeks ago, shortly after reading that Elsevier, the world’s largest academic publisher, had made over €1 billion in profit in 2017, I received notice of a new journal issue on decolonization and media.* “Decolonization” denotes the dismantling of imperialism, the overturning of systems of domination, and the founding ...

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Crossing Ironbound Borders

A journey of environmental justice

March 22, 2018 • by Ana I. Baptista

When I was a child, the city of Newark, New Jersey was often the punchline of bad jokes about urban blight and decay. But to me it was home. And it shaped my understanding of what I would dedicate my life to pursuing: Environmental justice. Growing up in a place called ...

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Is (Cynthia) Nixon the One?

The yearning for celebrity candidates

March 21, 2018 • by Claire Potter

I had heard the rumors that Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon planned to primary New York's Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, but I didn't believe them. It made so little sense to me that I ignored it until yesterday, when Nixon actually declared her candidacy. According to the Siena College poll ...

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Rex Tillerson, Women’s Obituaries, and National Geographic

Past Present Episode 123

March 21, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil debate Donald Trump’s firing of Rex Tillerson, the New York Times publishing obituaries for women it overlooked historically, and National Geographic’s self-study of its past racist coverage.

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Rex Tillerson, Women’s Obituaries, and National Geographic

Feature

Who Is Allowed to Speak For North Koreans?

Narratives of Captivity and Freedom

March 21, 2018 • by Reid Mitchell

The Southern Slavocracy’s obsession with people escaping slavery helped create anti-slavery feeling in the rest of the United States. The Slavocracy viewed these escapes as threats to the viability of the South’s Peculiar Institution. But until the Civil War, very few of the black people held in slavery did escape. ...

Who Is Allowed to Speak For North Koreans?

Feature

Fake Art and Inauthenticity in Philosophy

A review of Santiago Zabala’s ‘Why Only Art Can Save Us’

March 20, 2018 • by Paul A. Kottman

It was reported in the Washington Post that the Trump White House had asked to borrow Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 painting Landscape with Snow from the Guggenheim Museum in New York in order to display it in the President’s private quarters. [1] The request for the Van Gogh was refused. In its place, the Guggenheim offered ...

Fake Art and Inauthenticity in Philosophy

Education

What Walkouts Teach Students

A Report from San Diego

March 20, 2018 • by Elaine Lewinnek

Sometimes in San Diego County, when too many people run their air-conditioning all at once, we have blackouts. The first time a blackout happened after I moved here, one neighbor shouted across the street to me: “There’s a blackout! I think it might be terrorism! But don’t worry, I have ...

Blue Monday

Stormy Weather

Trump in trouble

March 19, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Spring approaches. But for Donald Trump, the bane of our existence, Winter is coming still. Just this past week and a half, as another Noreaster made its way across the east coast, the tempest that is the Trump ...

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The Curious Case of the Growing Placebo Effect

Evidence suggests that placebo effects are becoming more powerful

March 19, 2018 • by Jeremy Safran

Over the last several years evidence has been accumulating that placebo effects are becoming more powerful. Clinical trials on a range of medications used for treating both psychological and medical problems, are finding that differences in the magnitude of their impact relative to placebos are decreasing in size. For example, in ...

The Curious Case of the Growing Placebo Effect

Education

Concerns about Proposed Elimination of the History Major at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

An open letter

March 18, 2018 • by Mary Beth Norton

Provost Greg Summers University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Academic Affairs Room 202 Old Main, 2100 Main Street Stevens Point, WI 54481-3897 gsummers@uwsp.edu Dean Eric Yonke University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point College of Letters and Science 130 Collins Classroom Center 1801 Fourth Avenue Stevens Point, WI 54481 eyonke@uwsp.edu Dear Provost Summers and Dean Yonke: The American Historical Association is deeply concerned about the recently announced plans to ...

Concerns about Proposed Elimination of the History Major at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Feature

Lamb’s Victory and the 1974 Precedent

What the past may predict for the 2018 mid-terms

March 18, 2018 • by John Lawrence

Conor Lamb’s improbable but likely victory in Tuesday’s congressional race in the 18th district of Pennsylvania raises comparisons to the 1974 victories of Democratic candidates running in traditionally Republican districts. The significance of those earlier upsets as precursors to a November wave victory, is recounted in my just-published book, The Class of ...