[A Recap of the
month that was in AmericanStudying.]
April
1: 80s Comedies: Airplane: An April Fool’s series kicks off with what makes
a successful parody, and what makes a truly great one.
April
2: 80s Comedies: Ghostbusters: The series continues with two ways to
analyze science and the supernatural in the classic scary comedy.
April
3: 80s Comedies: Back to the Future: What the time travel comedy gets wrong
and what it gets rights, as the series laughs on.
April
4: 80s Comedies: Home Alone: The interesting, American layers underneath
one of our silliest holiday comedies.
April
5: 80s Comedies: Working Girl: The series concludes with the inspiring and
frustrating female characters of a socially thoughtful dramedy.
April
6-7: Crowd-sourced 80s Comedies: My latest crowd-sourced post, featuring
the responses and nominations of fellow ComedyStudiers—add yours in comments,
please!
April
8: StatueStudying: The Statue of Liberty: A StatueStudying series kicks off
with gaps in our memories of an iconic American statue.
April
9: StatueStudying: Saddam: The series continues with an anniversary post on
the value of recognizing US hypocrisies and the need to get beyond them.
April
10: StatueStudying: The Shaw Memorial: A historically, culturally, and
symbolically crucial statue and monument, as the series rolls on.
April
11: StatueStudying: Christ of the Ozarks: A few illuminating contexts for a
ginormous Christian statue.
April
12: StatueStudying: The Spirit of Detroit and the Cleveland War Memorial
Fountain: The inspiring messages and missing histories of two linked
Midwestern statues.
April
13-14: StatueStudying: Charlottesville Statues and Memorials: The series
concludes with two distinct spaces in which Cville seeks to remember, and one
hope moving forward.
April
15: Patriots’ Day: My annual Patriots’ Day post, on Martin’s Game of Thrones and the easy and hard
forms of patriotism.
April
16: Patriots’ Day Texts: “This Land”: A series on critically patriotic
texts kicks off with three layers to Gary Clark Jr.’s raw and compelling song
and video.
April
17: Patriots’ Day Texts: “Let America Be America Again”: The series
continues with how Langston Hughes’s fiery poems helps us challenge a
superficially patriotic slogan.
April
18: Patriots’ Day Texts: “The Land of the Free”: Two critically patriotic
texts that together produce one of our best recent cultural works, as the
series rolls on.
April
19: Patriots’ Day Texts: The Rise of David Levinsky: The series concludes
with a fascinating text that explores, extols, and explodes the rags to riches
narrative.
April
20-21: Patriots’ Day Texts: We the People: A special weekend update on my
forthcoming book!
April
22: Earth Day Studying: Animated Activisms: An Earth Day series kicks off
with three examples of the link between animation and the environment.
April
23: Earth Day Studying: Climate Change Voices: The series continues with
how a few inspiring historical voices would suggest we respond to our current
crisis.
April
24: Earth Day Studying: Henry David Thoreau: Three ways to honor Thoreau
and celebrate Earth Day, as the series rolls on.
April
25: Earth Day Studying: Edward Abbey: How the author and environmentalist reflects
three distinct and even contrasting forms of activism.
April
26: Earth Day Studying: Contemporary Works: The series concludes with three
recent books that carry environmental writing into the 21st century.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. Topics you’d
like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!
No comments:
Post a Comment