The Art of Being Posthuman: Who Are We in the 21st Century? By Francesca Ferrando

If critical posthumanism is enjoying particular momentum, what "the posthuman" might be remains a somewhat open question. Francesca Ferrando’s book The Art of Being Posthuman: Who Are We in the 21st Century? provides an insightful answer, cutting through philosophical posthumanism and lived life with a self-help book of sorts. If we have never been “human”, as Ferrando shows by navigating our entanglements across a strikingly wide array of realms and scales, one may realise with this book that to be posthuman may not be a state, but an act. Ferrando\u27s book is a rich contribution to critical and philosophical posthumanism, which is not only intellectual but also creative and affective

The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature By Laura Brown

Book review: The Counterhuman Imaginary: Earthquakes, Lapdogs, and Traveling Coinage in Eighteenth-Century Literature by Laura Brow

Twenty Years of Hell: An Analysis of the United States’ Failed Counterinsurgency Measures in Afghanistan

The United States has an impressive historical record of winning conventional wars. In contrast, their success fighting counterinsurgencies, a type of nonconventional warfare, is rather complicated. Many scholars argue that counterinsurgencies are destined to fail. Unlike conventional wars, which are often more organized and structured, counterinsurgencies aim to legitimize the host-nation government through nation-building campaigns. Counterinsurgencies are difficult to fight because of the tensions between the conventional power and the host-nation government, combined with the insurgents’ strong mental resolve of re-occupying their own country. The United States’ twenty-year war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, a Pashtun Islamic fundamentalist state terrorist group, is a prime example of the complications associated with fighting counterinsurgencies. This paper critically analyzes the United States’ initial strategic aims in Afghanistan and examines two failed counterinsurgency measures employed against the Taliban. The first is the United States’ failure to develop a functional democratic government under Hamid Karzai, and the second, a competent Afghan National Army (ANA). Ultimately, the paper argues that the United States overestimated the difficulty of fighting the Taliban insurgency while simultaneously supporting nation-building in Afghanistan. More generally, this paper reveals the difficulty for conventional military powers like the United States to fight successful counterinsurgencies against state terrorist groups in foreign regions

Condemning Intersectionality: Online Conservative News Media and Intersectional Panic

Research has increasingly drawn attention to the role of online conservative news media in propagating disinformation and reinforcing social inequalities. Scholarship, however, has yet to explore how these media represent intersectionality. Using a grounded theory approach, I examined how 427 online conservative news reports, from nine widely searched websites in the U.S., portrayed intersectionality. The authors of the reports employed a complex set of discourses to condemn intersectionality, constructing it as limited, hierarchical, and divisive, while also conveying panic over its ability to bring individuals on the Left into coalitions. I thus develop the concept intersectional panic to account for how these media responded to intersectionality with a considerable amount of fear or anxiety. Findings reveal that intersectional panic overlaps with, yet also operates differently from, other forms of panic, such as racist, sexist, or anti-LGBTQ fears, because the former involves anxiety over multiply-marginalized individuals advancing in U.S. society. I further reveal that these conservative news media sometimes used intersectional discourses to condemn intersectionality. Building on Patricia Hill Collins’s (2019) understanding of intersectionality as a critical tool for social justice, I argue that emphasizing intersectionality’s expansive and beneficial capacities would help challenge such panic

The Role of Football and Stadia Construction in Institutional Ascension: A Case Study of the Transition of Boise Junior College into Boise State University

The present case study offers a descriptive history on the construction and renovation of Boise State University’s football athletic grounds and stadia from 1932 through 1975 to better understand their contribution in the institutional history of the school. In particular, the current study uniquely shows the role football and stadia played within the ascension of the institution from a private junior college to large public state university. Boise State is one among several institutions that transitioned from junior college to state college and then university status. To realize the goals of the current study, information was sought on important stakeholders and groups, environmental or contextual factors, and decisions that influenced the construction of various football grounds and/or stadia at Boise State. Next, the present work examined how football and competition grounds or stadia at Boise State impacted the perception of the institution and facilitated its transition from junior college to major university status. Overall, the current essay legitimizes previous assumptions offered by other institutional histories that football and its stadia helped to ensure school survival. Moreover, football and stadia could serve as a strategic asset within an institution’s ascension from institute, normal college, community college, junior college, and state college to university status

The Rise of The Vaps: Estonia\u27s Path to Right-Wing Authoritarianism in the Interwar Period

The present-day world has begun to see an unsettling trend as far right-wing movements have become much more prominent and even seized power in the Western world. Across Europe, far-right movements have gained popularity amongst populations over the last decade, and the trend has become glaringly obvious with the recent election results in the United States. History provides us with a parallel to the rise of the far right to political prominence, as only a century prior in the Interwar Period, many nations descended down the path of far-right movements. Most far-right movements and strongmen seized power through undemocratic means, except in the small Baltic nation of Estonia. This essay explores the rise of the far-right movement in Estonia in the Interwar period, and what reasons led to the Estonian population voting for them in 1934. Through the reasons discussed in the essay on why this movement became so popular, a warning from history can be served to our world today on why populations today are flirting with these movements. It is essential not just to write off more radical movements, but to understand the underlying causes that cause people to turn to these democratically dangerous alternatives. 

Berlin

Photographie, Berlin, Allemagn