Protest as Sport
The through line for a collision between national anthem, sports, and protest that has persisted from 1968’s black-gloved fists in the air to #TakeAKnee is not as straight as you might believe.
Essays
The Cost of America’s Insistence on its Innocence
The lessons and legacies of Vietnam in 1968, the year the war turned, are many. What endures above all, however, is a sense of tragedy, the bewilderment of a people who cannot understand to this day what they did wrong.
The Reproductive Freedom that Could Have Been
Because of its messiness, 1968 serves as a productive staging ground for imagining what feminist reproductive politics could mean today.
The “Long” 1968: A Historical Overview
What happened in the tumultuous 50 years before 1968, why 1968 shaped the 50 years that would follow, and how that pivotal year may yet shape our future.
South of Suez
When Great Britain announced in January 1968 its military withdrawal from colonial holdings bracketing the Indian Ocean, it announced an era of reckoning in which colonial legacy and Islamically-oriented political parties vied for power across the Middle East. Today, Sudan and Yemen remain salient examples of that era's lasting effects.
Mothers’ Day
There was a time when I had dreams, infrequently but strikingly, that my mother had died. These occurred some years ago when I did not talk to her very regularly or see her often.
The Vacuous Consumption of the Urban Hipster
Starbucks uses for its in-stores soundtrack music celebrating individual tenacity and collective rebellion, but that supposed renegade spirit takes on a different context when the soundtrack is bebop jazz, and two African-American customers are arrested for failing to place their order in due time.
Dogmatism and the Judgments of the Music Critic
The reason the Grammys repeatedly lead to such a feeling of disappointment and letdown is, ultimately, because the Grammys in their current form cannot possibly reflect the intersecting and complicated notions of musical value held by its audience. The best the Recording Academy can do—and indeed, what the Academy should do—is make transparent its musical priorities.
The Planet of “Despacito”
What is special about Latine representation in pop music in 2017 is that not only is an often overlooked ethnicity getting the representation that it deserves, but also that its representation has been diverse.
The Sorrows of Being a Millennial
Just as scholars consider how baby boomers’ Cold War experiences shaped their understandings of global politics, will future historians ask how millennials’ active shooter drills shaped their understandings of national politics?