Changing Faces of Change: Metanarratives in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

This article explores the significance of the theme of “change” in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, going beyond its rhetorical use by the candidates or as a way of defining a historic electoral shift (making an “election of change”) to examine how change played a critical role in the political landscape itself. One can locate voters’ desire for change in many existing conditions leading up to the race, but also ideologically and as a force in its own right. Framing of the election as a story reveals that the various actors were increasingly aware of their shifting identities, representations, and agency; thus, change was not just a plot of the story, frequently expressed in terms of populism and popular culture, but a fundamental dynamic behind competing metanarratives and contestations of how the story should be told

Metastability and instability in holographic gauge theories

We review and extend previous results regarding the stability and thermodynamics of Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime at finite temperature. Using a combination of analytic and numerical techniques, we compute the energy, temperature, and entropy of perfect fluid stars in asymptotically AdS spacetimes. We find that at sufficiently high temperature (in the canonical ensemble) or energy (in the microcanonical ensemble) these configurations develop dynamical instabilities, which presumably lead to the formation of a black hole. We extend our analysis to the case of $AdS \times S$ compactifications stabilized by flux (such as those that arise in supergravity and string theory), and find that the inclusion of the sphere does not substantially alter these results. We then map out the phase structure of these theories in the canonical and microcanonical ensembles, paying attention to inequivalence of these ensembles for global anti-de Sitter space. With a certain scaling limit, the critical temperature can be parametrically lower than the string temperature, so that supergravity is a good description at the instability point. We comment on the implications of this for the unitarity of black holes.Comment: 39 pages, 13 figure

Fear in the Classroom: Campus Carry at the University of Texas at Austin

This article examines the significance of fear of concealed handguns in the classroom at a public university in Texas, analyzing perceived changes in shared social space and the collective learning environment in terms of affect. This multimethod study provides a framework for understanding the factors behind the fear, which may be seen as personal, societal, or a dynamic combination of those manifested in local relationships. Furthermore, it explores disruptions of instruction and discussion, the profiling of other students as potential gun carriers, and the introduction of situational awareness in class. Based on ethnography conducted at The University of Texas at Austin, where campus carry was implemented in 2016, this article provides a context for those in the discipline of education, as well as instructors and administrators at other institutions of higher learning in the United States, to consider the complex nature of fear of guns and its impact on the classroom atmosphere.Educatio

Popularizing Electoral Politics: Change in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Race

This special issue of the European Journal of American Studies examines the popularization of electoral politics during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The popularization processes include the rise of populism penetrating the U.S. political landscape; a media focus on human interest, rather than policy substance questions; personality politics and celebrity culture at the center stage of the election; and the appropriation and dissemination of popular culture discourses by social media users. The articles draw from transdisciplinary American Studies approaches to tackle a range of issues which arose during the election, from contestations of “American-ness” and competing narratives of truth—or “post-truth”—to questions of campaign finance and displays of violence, verbal and physical. The issue also takes a closer look at specific expressions of popular culture as reflected in the media, specifically in relation to the rise of nativism and the alt-right movement, the political impact of comedy on the election, and the significance of memes in the battle over image and meaning-making. The processes of popularizing electoral politics of the 2016 race had distinct consequences, not only in shaping political culture as we know it, but also in destabilizing established rules of political conduct

Beyond Argumentum in Terrorem: The Contested Rhetoric of Campus Carry

This essay reflects on the use of competing rhetorical frames of fear strategically used by the academic community of The University of Texas at Austin in the debate on Campus Carry policy. With the legalization of concealed handguns on campus, fear emerged as a prominent trope in public discussions, albeit used in very different ways by supporters or opponents of the law. Against the more standard interpretation of fear-based rhetoric as an exploitation of others’ insecurities, this essay draws on mixed-methods research to examine expressions of fear by activist opponents of Campus Carry and the way in which supporters of the law sought to deconstruct it. </div

Fear in the Classroom: Campus Carry at The University of Texas at Austin

This article examines the significance of fear of concealed handguns in the classroom at a public university in Texas, analyzing perceived changes in shared social space and the collective learning environment in terms of affect. This multimethod study provides a framework for understanding the factors behind the fear, which may be seen as personal, societal, or a dynamic combination of those manifested in local relationships. Furthermore, it explores disruptions of instruction and discussion, the profiling of other students as potential gun carriers, and the introduction of situational awareness in class. Based on ethnography conducted at The University of Texas at Austin, where campus carry was implemented in 2016, this article provides a context for those in the discipline of education, as well as instructors and administrators at other institutions of higher learning in the United States, to consider the complex nature of fear of guns and its impact on the classroom atmosphere.</p

(Dis)Belief in QAnon: Competing Hermeneutics in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Among many disruptive events in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, the meta-conspiracy theory known as QAnon surged, intertwining politics and (quasi-)religious belief in ways that have yet to be fully understood. This article explores the power of deep memetic frames—namely, how we ideologically see the world and communicate that worldview—as a means used by certain individuals and amplified by politicians, including President Trump, to mobilize the voting public across party lines. It also reveals how representations of QAnon by the mainstream media played into the movement’s success. For QAnon followers, the election became a crossroads moment, a “Great Awakening” whereby one could identify as part of a collective insider movement. Examining the epistemological de/construction of truth in a media context and diverging hermeneutical approaches—faith and suspicion, respectively—the article argues for the importance of religion as a lens to better understand QAnon in a deeply polarized United States. </p

Microscopic origin of the entropy of astrophysical black holes

We construct an infinite family of microstates for black holes in Minkowski spacetime which have effective semiclassical descriptions in terms of collapsing dust shells in the black hole interior. Quantum mechanical wormholes cause these states to have exponentially small, but universal, overlaps. We show that these overlaps imply that the microstates span a Hilbert space of log dimension equal to the event horizon area divided by four times the Newton constant, explaining the statistical origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. v3: minor edits, discussion section adde

A Brief History of Spiral Dynamics

For nearly two decades, the theory of Spiral Dynamics has been used to dynamically model human evolution and information systems. In that time, however, many different versions and applications of the model have emerged. This article will diachronically trace the history of Spiral Dynamics, from the foundational theory of Clare Graves to its initial introduction by Don Beck and Chris Cowan and subsequent adaptation by Ken Wilber. A brief exploration of the various camps and their competing interpretations of Spiral Dynamics will permit some critical analysis of the model itself.</p