Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Teaching Dystopia, Amy Wong

Amy Wong

This year, those of us who work in college classrooms kicked off our semesters with the spectacle of Trump’s inauguration: its bluffed militarism, its dark vision, its citation, in effect, of Bane, from the Batman dystopia The Dark Knight Rises. Everything about the inauguration presaged the bitter, disputatious, spectacle-driven manias that have come to mark the 45th Presidency. It was clear, on that grey January day, that dystopia was newly in vogue as he intoned: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation. We all bleed …

Politics, Inclusion, And Social Practice, Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Amy Wong

Amy Wong

"In the wake of the American election, Elaine Hadley’s 'Closing Remarks' from v21’s b2o issue—that we are writing, living, and teaching in a 'critical moment, some might even say a survivalist moment' in which 'the power of positive psychology does not seem adequate to the times'—appear chilling in their urgency. Hadley cautions against a pleasure and optimism largely disengaged from feminist and class critiques, as well as from what she calls 'Politics with a big P.'"

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