Predestined for Greatness? Calvinism’s Role in the Formation of 18th Century American Nationalism

From the Puritans of New England to the Anglicans of the South, a patchwork of competing religious ideals existed in colonial America. Through that diversity, there emerged a singular thread of religious influence which worked, during the Revolution and beyond, to craft a nascent sense of American nationalism: American Calvinism. Beginning with the reformer John Calvin and his disciple, Theodore Beza, in Europe, Calvinism expanded to the New World. There, emboldened by the isolation of the American continent, Calvinism became a rare source of commonality between colonies with disparate religious beliefs. When war raged between Britain and the American colonies in the late eighteenth century, the American Founders utilized Calvinism to rally as many Americans as possible around their national cause. Utilizing the words of the American Founders and peer-reviewed scholarship regarding their outlook, this paper analyzes the history of American Calvinism while focusing on how it crafted a sense of American national identity out of the throes of Revolution. This paper proposes that American Calvinism was unlike its late-medieval European counterpart in its uniqueness. This Americanized branch of Calvinism combined a Lockean focus on individual rights and republicanism with a traditional Calvinist focus on the necessity of morality and formed one of the essential cogs in a new sense of American nationalism. This paper demonstrates that, though not all of the American Founders respected Calvin, or his religious ideals, (Thomas Jefferson was famously critical), they recognized the importance that Calvinism held for the masses of America. Because of this recognition, the paper proposes that the American Founders adapted their speech, mannerisms, and public statements to advance the cause of colonial unity, helping to form a unique version of American nationalism from separate colonies toward the end of the eighteenth century

Lost at Sea: The Nintendo GameCube’s Failure and the Transformation of an Industry 1996-2006

The history of video games is critically underdeveloped. Long simmering under a veil of academic neglect, video games have long been denied the sort of academic relevance of their sister industries: books, film, music, and TV. It is long-past time that such neglect was addressed. Most historical analyses of games begin with their origins in the 1950s, discuss their ubiquity during the heyday of Atari or Nintendo, or rope in modern views of games as tools of diversity and inclusion. Very few studies pay attention to the rather ugly adolescent years of the game industry, its motorcycle-jacket wearing, rebellious teenage years, so to speak. This era of game design maturation, from the end of Nintendo’s dominance in 1995 until the release of the Wii in 2006 saw a dramatic shift in games marketing. It was a dark age where games moved away from their roots as experiences meant for any person into an era of concentrated marketing toward young males where female nudity, sex, and gratuitous violence were the main selling points of successful titles. The GameCube, Nintendo’s home console from 2001-2006, suffered from this same myopia. Dominated by marketers who saw the need to advertise to adolescent males but coupled with software that was still primarily family-focused, the GameCube floundered, finding itself neither hither nor thither in its pursuit to be all things to all markets. In its failure, Nintendo found the seeds of success for its following console, the Wii, and embarked on a mission to once again bring games back to the general public. Through the GameCube’s failure, Nintendo, under visionary leader Satoru Iwata, reimagined games as a product that everyone could enjoy and, in the process, helped lead the industry into modernity