On Modern Retellings

By Savannah Finver

Photo of Lin Manuel Miranda in musical Hamilton

Given the explosive popularity of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway hit Hamilton, it appears that the United States has recently been preoccupied with questions regarding the history of its citizens of African heritage and the slave trade which brought so many of them to American soil. One of my favorite songs on the Hamilton soundtrack is “Cabinet Battle #1”in which Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson go head-to-head over states’ rights. During his portion of the rap battle, Hamilton mocks Jefferson by repeating one of his earlier lines: “’We plant seeds in the south. We create.’ Yeah, keep ranting. We know who’s really doing the planting.” Continue reading “On Modern Retellings”

Selective Storytelling

By Savannah Finver

“Hey, how was your weekend?”

It’s a question we hear all the time, one which we don’t put much thought into. After all, we spend a good portion of our lives telling stories. Storytelling, however, is a social tool we use to exchange information, and like any skill, it needs to be taught to us if we want to be able to use it effectively. What often goes unexplored, however, is that how we narrate our stories depends upon who is asking us about our weekend in the first place and why. And telling the stories of history is no different. Continue reading “Selective Storytelling”

Disconnecting Truth from Free Speech

Image of cylinder with shadows of square and circle, illustrating perception does not equal truth

By Ana Schuber

Harry Potter, or in human form Daniel Radcliff, is currently acting in an off-Broadway play titled The Lifespan of a Fact.  Timely and satirical, the play posits a contemporary political pastime of major and minor news agencies across the world:  fact-checking truth.  Perhaps the more important question one might ask today is:  is there truth out there to be found by all these fact checkers?   For Radcliff, there are no magic wands, no all-knowing Hermione Grangers and no easy answer to this question as he portrays the dedicated fact checker. Tim Teemen in his review of this play for the Daily Beast explains that the play is about “what counts as fact and the perception of fact in what we read and visually and aurally consume every day.” Continue reading “Disconnecting Truth from Free Speech”

Is this “Rising” or even Equal?

By Ana Schuber

So, here in the middle, actually right up on the final run toward the mid-term 2018 elections, it was amazing to see a political advertisement that turned the standard dialogue about women running for office on its head.  Paid for by the Serve America PAC, a democratic effort, this ad features eight first time congressional female candidates running across the United States for elected office. You should watch it here:

I have a long and varied path from my early identification as a feminist in the 1960s to the present Pussy Hat wearing throng of women with political ambition or political desire.  This ad was new. Continue reading “Is this “Rising” or even Equal?”