Tropics of Meta is meant to offer a historical and theoretical perspective on current events, popular culture, and issues in the academic world. We hope it can serve as a sounding board for new ideas and new research, as well as a clearinghouse for innovative projects in digital arts and humanities.
Alex Sayf Cummings is an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University. His work deals with media, law, and the political culture of the modern United States. He has previously received a Consortium for Faculty Diversity fellowship, an ACLS-Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, and the American Baptist Historical Society’s Torbet Prize, among other awards. His work has appeared in Salon, the Brooklyn Rail, the Journal of American History, Technology and Culture, and the edited volume Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction from the University of Pennsylvania Press. His first book, Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in Spring 2013.
Ryan Reft is a doctoral student in the History Department at the University of California at San Diego. He has studied at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, New York University, and Columbia University, and taught for nine years in the New York public school system. During this period he participated and appeared in the PBS documentary Starting from Behind: The Success Story of Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day H.S. (8/13/2004). His research deals with the history of housing, homeownership, metropolitan America, gender/sexuality and the politics of race and class in the twentieth century US. His work has appeared in the The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, the journal Souls and Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America’s New Leadership. He writes the Intersections column for SoCal’s KCET.
Joel Suarez is a doctoral student in History at Princeton University. He received his BA in Government and Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and his MA in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University. His research interests include politics, pessimism, political economy, anti-Black racism, normative political philosophy, immigration, urban studies, empire, and music.
Adam E. Gallagher is a doctoral student in Political Science at George Mason University. He received his BA in Political Science and Philosophy from Ohio Northern University. His research interests include Marxian political philosophy, critical approaches to the study of international relations, U.S. foreign policy (particularly in the Middle East), social movements, and nonviolence. He also has a healthy disdain for classic liberalism. His work has appeared in Capital & Class and Speckled Axe, among other publications, and he has written and spoken on Middle Eastern affairs for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Jerusalem Fund’s Palestine Center. He can be followed on Twitter.
Amy Heishman is an adjunct professor at Durham Technical Community College and a writing coach with the Emily Krzyzewski Center. She received her BA in American Literature and History from Belmont Abbey College and MA in Contemporary American Literature from NC State University. She is a contributing editor for the Triangle Free Press (Durham, NC) and freelances for several local publications. Her research interests include digital media, subversive art, alternative histories, responsible agriculture, sustainable lifestyles and gender politics. She spends most her time immersed in culture studies in hopes of one day subverting her own third world country. Her professional home on the web can be found at itsonthesyllabus.wordpress.com.
Keith Orejel is a doctoral student in History at Columbia University. He received his BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently working on a dissertation that examines the political economy of post-World War II rural America. His research interests include the history of American conservatism, deindustrialization, Republican Party politics, the Civil Rights Movements, and the American South. His article “Violence in Behalf of Civil Rights: The Federal Government’s Response to the Murder of Medgar Evers,” is forthcoming from Southern Quarterly.
Shane Updike works for Highline Public Schools near Seattle, providing data analysis with an emphasis on ensuring students are college and career ready when graduating from high school. He has studied at Seattle University, New York University, and the University of Washington.. He is also on the Board of Directors of Team Read, an education non-profit that works with Seattle Public Schools. Prior to moving to Seattle to pursue of Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Washington he was a high school history teacher in New York City. He is not sure where he would have landed in the recently published rankings of New York teachers, but is relatively confident he would have been in top 60% or so.
Other contributors include Cherie Braden, Moses Casual, Mindy Clegg, Ben Coates, Maryann Dabski, Carribean Fragoza, Romeo Guzman, Nathan Hartle, Bradlee Hicks, Jimmy Jenkins, Nick Juravich, Mookie Kideckel, Clement Lime, John Miller, Will Moore, Nina Morrison, Kenneth Maffitt, Adam David Morton, Christopher O’Connor, Jason Resnikoff, John Southard, Lauren MacIvor Thompson, and Jude Webre.
Inquiries should be directed to tropicsofmeta@gmail.com, and submissions are always welcome.
Recent Comments