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Tanuki in Popular Discourse: Cholera, COVID-19, and the Liminal Space Between the Supernatural and Science
By Kathryn M. Tanaka, Associate Professor at the University of Hyogo Featured image by Sam Nystrom Costales Over the past few days, there have been a number of articles linking raccoon dogs in a live animal, or wet, market in Wuhan with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic.1 The raccoon dogs at the heart…Read…
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“Stark, Your Weapons Are everything We Hoped For!”: Iron Man’s 1963 Origins and America’s Vision of Vietnam
By James Sandy, Assistant Professor, The University of Texas at Arlington Featured image by Sam Nystrom Costales In a dark jungle, Wong-Chu, the “red guerrilla tyrant,” menaces yet another helpless village in South Vietnam. With the hair and dress of Mao Zedong and racially stereotyped broken English, the painfully over-caricatured villain literally wrestles the villagers…Read…
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“Pop-up books aren’t just for kids!”: A Conversation with Suzanne Karr Schmidt
Featured image by Sam Nystrom Costales I was thrilled when I found out about the Newberry Library’s new exhibit, Pop-Up Books through the Ages, because it is such an incredible collection of pieces that touch on both the history of books and popular culture. I reached out to Suzanne Karr Schmidt, the Curator of Rare…Read…