Culture wars in the Commonwealth: Public libraries, book bans, and the First Amendment

Public libraries are quickly losing the ‘culture war’ being waged against them (Jones, 2024). They also lack the coordinated support, resources, and legislative power of those leading the national assault on the right to read, intellectual freedom, and the First Amendment (ALA, 2024). Few resources provide timely and relevant guidance for public libraries on negotiating book challenges with concerned community members, elected officials, and interested parties. This research study responds to nascent ‘culture war’ developments in Virginia – specifically, recent government interference in public library governance in Warren County in December (Schneider, 2024) and a new bill targeting ‘obscene’ materials tabled in January 2025 (VA Senate Bill No. 931)– to propose a pilot research study with Virginia public library staff, administrators, and volunteers familiar with local book challenges and negotiations to understand better how organizational negotiation capability impacts their outcomes (Gordon & Furlong, 2023). It uses qualitative (semi-structured interviews) and quantitative (Negotiation Assessment Tool) methods to provide invaluable local and state research and evidence-based approaches to inform these increasingly high-stakes negotiations (Gordon & Furlong, 2023; Seidman, 2019). It builds on the co-Principal Investigators strong body of research in equity, assessment, and public librarianship (Harper et al., 2021; Matthews, 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2025; Matthews & Thomas, 2022, 2025; Mongeon et al., 2021) along with their combined thirty years of professional experience in librarianship and community development to propose a timely study to advance a more comprehensive understanding of book challenge negotiations and support public libraries on a state and national level

Что нового рассказал “Мисопогон”о взаимоотношениях Петра I и его подданных?

Review of E. V. Akel’ev, Russkii Misopogon: Petr I, bradobritie i desiat’ millionov “moskovitov,” Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2022. 624 p. ISBN: 978-5-4448-1928-9.What New Things Does Misopogon Reveal about the Relations between Peter I and his Subjects?

Looking at Nothing, Bigly: The Right-Wing Politics of Texture Mapping Earth

Are render engines fascist? This article proposes a debate on the relationship between conservative and far-right politics and environmental visualization technologies. The argument works through a close reading of a patented texture mapping process owned by Google Earth and a related artistic project titled Postcards from Google Earth (2010-ongoing) by Clement Valla. These case studies surface the engineering choices that selectively edit and optimize what is seen by users, thus creating a very particular, and manipulable, framing of “environment.” On this basis the article makes two claims: one, that computer graphics play a part in the conservative, right, and far-right mobilizations of nature-as-metaphor that nourish fascist and populist imaginaries, and two, that computer graphics more broadly reshapes human visual culture in ways that amplify the central contradictions of liberalism that have historically been exploited by fascism, such as an anti-allegiance to fact and rationality. The article concludes that combining digital technologies with representations of environments can resurrect latent conservative politics of the environment, and furthermore, that these politics can be directly and critically assessed through canonical interrogations of landscape art.

Ivan Argunov’s Portrait of Anna Kalmykova

This article examines Ivan Petrovich Argunov’s 1767 painting of Anna Nikolaevna Kalmykova, one of many Kalmyk children removed from their families by the Russian military and forcibly adopted by elite Russians and Europeans. Both sitter and painter were, in different ways, unfree: Argunov was enserfed by the Sheremetev family and Kalmykova was their ward. Examining the portrait’s many visual antecedents and references, this paper argues that Argunov used the intimate, informal styles of Enlightenment portraiture in a way that enmeshed its subject and author in the harsh social hierarchies of the Sheremetev household and imperial society. The relatively loose facture of the painting and its attention to the sitter’s liveliness and youth demonstrate Argunov’s skill as a modern portraitist. But although Kalmykova dominates the composition of her own portrait (which makes it unlike most other portraits of Kalmyk people in Russia during this period), Argunov makes clear that she is subordinate to her patron and other members of her “adoptive” family. Mapping the power structures of the household that enserfed him, Argunov combined private and ceremonial idioms in a way that said much about Kalmykova’s status and his own – a manner of portraiture that could only be copied by other artists from outside the household

On the Uses of Decolonial History for Life

This essay provides arguments in favor of decolonizing the field of Russian and East European Studies,focusing on the eighteenth-century history of Ukrainian-Russian relations. It envisages two directions fordecolonization: overcoming the traditional narrative of Russian history and rethinking the basic categorieswe use to tell the history of the Russian Empire. It argues that we should reconsider a one-sided view ofempire as an embodiment of the politics of difference and pay more attention to the early modern policies of acculturation and assimilation that took the form of russification in the Russian Empire. It also emphasizes the need to overcome reductionism, typical of traditional national history. The history of the Ukrainian-Russian encounter in the early modern period cannot be presented as a black-and-white narrative of Russian subjugation and repression and Ukrainian resistance. It was a more complex story that also included a dimension of cultural entanglement with strong mutual influences

Birth of the Thick Journal: Gerhard Müller and Monthly Compositions

Review of A. G. Gotovtseva, "Sie est\u27 naipolezneishee dlia rossiiskogo obshchestva": Zhurnal "Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia" kak rossiiskii integratsionnyi prosveshchencheskii proiekt serediny XVIII veka. Moscow: Izdatel’skii Dom IaSK, 2018. 369 p. ISBN: 978590711735

Nice White Lady: A Mixed Methods Study of Race and Femininity in Librarianship

            This dissertation examines the role of race and femininity in North American librarianship through the lens of the educational expectations of the discipline. As the master’s degree in library and information science (LIS) is both the entry point to the profession as emphasized by the American Library Association (ALA), and the terminal degree, it is fair to suggest that this educational lens is an appropriate point of inquiry while working to understand the race and gender demographics of those within the profession itself. Librarianship has long been a white-dominated, female-intensive profession, a term coined by researcher Roma Harris (1992) and is the focal point of this study.          A mixed methods approach was taken with quantitative and qualitative data gathered through an anonymous survey seeking information on the role of gender or gender expression and race and ethnicity on the educational experiences and career trajectory of current librarians. Further information was gathered through interviews. The study was designed through the framework of Harris’ adaptation of Career Development Theory.          The results of this study concluded that both race and gender have had significant impacts on the education and careers of librarians in the United States both directly, and through the indirect means of personal finances, social upheaval, and a dependence on heteronormative workplace and household structures. Using the information gathered here as well as an overview of the discipline’s shifting history, it is fair to conclude that the system of librarianship was designed for white women

Anime’s Other Identities: New Frameworks for Black Anime and Beyond

This paper is based on a ‘Black anime’ presentation given at the first ‘Transnational Perspectives on Anime’ symposium at Lancaster University in 2025. It introduces the topic of ‘Black anime’ as emerging from the globalisation of Japanese anime. By exploring the development of ‘Black anime’ over time, it charts this new genre’s increasingly delineated form as a complex process and hard-fought battle for ownership and identity, overcoming academic and cultural barriers and borders

Reimagining LIS Education: Integrating Evidence-Based Practice with Human-Centered Pedagogy

This paper examines innovative pedagogical practices in Library and Information Science (LIS) that integrate evidence-based practice with humanistic, decolonizing approaches. Based on interdisciplinary research conducted by the “Libraries and Resilient Communities” group, we critique traditional LIS curricula for prioritizing technical competencies and quantitative measures over the complex realities faced by librarians serving diverse communities. Through participatory insights from public library directors and findings on libraries’ roles in fostering community resilience, we propose a reimagined framework that embeds critical inquiry into the Evidence-Based Practice cycle. This approach incorporates culturally responsive assignments structured in five phases (Articulate, Assemble, Assess, Agree, Adapt), enabling students to address both technical challenges and the lived experiences of patrons. By fostering equity-driven, trauma-informed practices, this model prepares future librarians to navigate the intersection of technological expertise and social engagement, equipping them to advance scientific rigor while championing social justice in contemporary library practice