Author: TheConversation

By Mark Wilson, Professor, Urban & Regional Planning, School of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State University The Summer Olympics, postponed in 2020 by a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is scheduled to begin on July 23, 2021, in Tokyo. Even though surfing and four other sports will debut at these games, the locals are not exactly thrilled. According to a recent poll, some 83% of the Japanese public wants the Olympics canceled, and protests are frequent. Amid a coronavirus surge that’s left the country short on hospital space and slow on carrying out vaccinations, an association representing...

By Nick Lehr, Arts + Culture Editor Photographer Ron Tarver grew up in Fort Gibson, a small town in Oklahoma where horses, cattle and Wrangler jeans were embedded into the rhythms of everyday life. His grandfather was a cowboy admired for his roping abilities, and many of his family members owned ranches in the area. But he wanted “to get away from horses,” and in 1983, he landed a job as a staff photojournalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he found himself drawn to a range of subjects, from storefront churches to star jump-ropers. Then, in the early 1990s,...

By Aram Goudsouzian, Bizot Family Professor of History, University of Memphis James Meredith was walking down Highway 51 just south of Hernando, Mississippi. It was June 6, 1966, the second day of his planned 220-mile trek from Memphis to Jackson, which he undertook to encourage Black people to overcome racist intimidation and to register to vote. As cars filled with newspaper reporters and police officers rolled nearby, he walked a sloping stretch of road lined with pine trees. He heard a shout: “James Meredith! James Meredith!” A white man in a roadside gully lifted his shotgun, aimed at Meredith...

By William Nash, Professor of American Studies and English and American Literatures, Middlebury Speaking on NPR’s Fresh Air, Barry Jenkins, the director of “The Underground Railroad,” noted that “before making this show … I would have said I’m the descendant of enslaved Africans.” “I think now that answer has evolved,” he continued. “I am the descendant of blacksmiths and midwives and herbalists and spiritualists.” As a scholar interested in how modern representations of enslavement shape our understanding of the past, I am struck by the ways Jenkins seeks to change the way viewers think about – and talk about...