BY GERDA ROELVINK Over the past six months in Australia we have experienced a long and extreme drought, devastating widespread bush fires, and now the Covid-19 pandemic. These crises have brought to the fore already simmering questions about how we are to survive, let alone thrive, with others on this planet. Achille Mbembe’s (2020) reflection … More The Power of a Pause
The Modern Language Association has announced that Jonathan Eburne’s Outsider Theory: Intellectual Histories of Unorthodox Ideas has won the James Russell Lowell Prize. One of the most prestigious scholarly awards in the world since its founding in 1969, the Lowell Prize honors an outstanding work in literary or linguistic study written by a member of the … More Thinking outside the orthodox box: An interview with Jonathan Eburne, winner of the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize
BY KATE PHILLIPPOLoyola University Chicago’s School of Education It’s hard to miss academic competition these days. In 2019 alone, events abound. Authorities charged public personalities with felony crimes in response to the “Varsity Blues” college admissions cheating scandal. News and social media exploded with debates over the College Board’s experimental inclusion of an “adversity score” … More Learning from youth about competitive school choice policy
EDITORS’ STATEMENT BY NICK ESTES AND JASKIRAN DHILLON Standing Rock marked a turning point for Indigenous resistance on Turtle Island. And although the camps had been forcefully evicted by police two weeks after Donald Trump took office, the struggle continues. While temperatures rise worldwide and the rightward global authoritarian turn intensifies, there are signs of … More Standing Rock and the eternal fight for decolonization and freedom across the world.
Teachers strike in Oakland. Photo credit: Brooke AndersonPhotography. Published on Common Dreams.Used with permission. T. V. REEDBuchanan Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Washington State University As Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth has carefully documented, throughout modern history large-scale civil disobedience has been the most effective way to bring about significant social change—including overthrowing authoritarian regimes. If only … More This key point in US history urgently calls for peaceful, art-filled protest.
Recent events on Hawai’i’s Big Island represent the latest in a nearly decade-long dispute between Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and settler colonial forces seeking to build the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea. Kanaka Maoli have resisted the construction of TMT on the summit, one of the most sacred sites … More Mauna Kea: "More than just a list of physical attributes."
BY MATTHEW HAYESSt. Thomas University, New Brunswick What happens when North American retirement ideals of adventure and personal growth collide with the material realities of a Latin American city, going through a process of rapid urban growth spurred by rural-to-urban migration? This is a question I tried to answer in Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration under Late … More Migration and global justice: North American economic migrants in Latin America
JOSHUA SBICCAAssistant professor of sociology at Colorado State University Congress is in the midst of reconciling the House and Senate versions of the 2018 Farm Bill. Time is short. On September 30, the current law expires. No matter what transpires it will still not be enough to fully regulate the food system. The public debate … More You cannot have a just farm bill and eat it too.
JONATHAN P. EBURNEPennsylvania State University When I was in graduate school, an acquaintance of mine introduced me to a movie called Ruggles of Red Gap. Released by Paramount in 1935, the film—a quirky comedy—features the Canadian actress Maude Eburne (no relation), who made a career playing characters named “Ma.” Ruggles of Red Gap is perhaps … More Outsider Theory, Ruggles of Red Gap, and unforgetting: On the unfinished, ongoing work of political and intellectual struggle.
In May 2018, students in Prof. Lorena Muñoz’s University of Minnesota graduate seminar “GWSS 8620: Geographies of Sexualities and Race: Economies, (Im)Migrations, and Borders” read and discussed David K. Seitz’s book, A House of Prayer for All People: Contesting Citizenship in a Queer Church. Prof. Muñoz’s seminar taught first monographs to help demystify the transition from … More On constitutive contradictions, LGBT citizenship, and the church.
