The past is present
The US response to 9/11 led to the reconfiguration of American militarism and attitudes about the US military. This reverberated in the video game industry, particularly evident in the dramatic increase in Vietnam War games.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, radio programmers worried about what music might mean to listeners. In the years that followed, the US military and other state authorities began to treat sound as a tool that could be used to disorient, exhaust, injure, and coerce, leveraging sound as a physical and painful coercive force.
The post-9/11 War on Terror produced legal and technical infrastructure designed to monitor communications and suppress terrorist propaganda. Meta's content moderation practices, shaped by post-9/11 counterterrorism policies, have led to collateral censorship that conflates legitimate political discourse with support for terrorism, undermining freedom of expression globally.
Years before Colin Kaepernick’s dissent, the national anthem had become wrapped up in US cultural politics, a phenomenon that 9/11 exacerbated. In the wake of September 11th, Americans rallied around the flag in ways that at first seemed natural and inspiring, but almost immediately became performative and enveloped in the roiling divisiveness that has come to characterize 21st-century America.
The recent Artemis II launch reminds us that moon missions are grounded not only in technologies, but in the social and political realities of their time.
In this assignment for the course "The 2000s," students write a response to the 2008 film Wall-E. The assignment asks them to consider the film's messages about key early 21st-century issues, including technology and the environment.
This course is a survey of US History from 2000 to 2015. It examines the US through political, social, cultural, economic, and diplomatic lenses. Students will learn about major historical developments, including the War on Terror, culture-war battlegrounds, neoliberalism, and the expansion of the Internet.
Today’s activists know what those in the Black freedom movement knew: Jail, No Bail was a critique of not just bail, but of an entire system of unjust laws and courts. Then and now, activists understand that power concedes nothing–not desegregation, not pre-trial freedom—without a fight.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Like many Vietnam War-era films, Taxi Driver contains historical truths but also reinforces deeply problematic myths about veterans, homecoming, and trauma.
Fifty-five years ago this month, All in the Family debuted, launching a transformation of the American sitcom.
Clio and the Contemporary 