Colloquium Series Coordinator:
Nicholas Ware
nware@bgsu.edu

All colloquia will run approximately from 11:00am to 12:00pm followed by an informal "brown bag lunch" from 12:00pm until 1:00pm. The Center will provide dessert and beverages. All events will take place on the Bowling Green State University Main Campus. 

FALL SEMESTER 2009:

September 17, 2009
Location: 201A Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenter: Dr. Esther Clinton, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Popular Culture
Presentation Title: “Interdisciplinary Collaborations, or, How a Popular Culture Scholar Got Published in a Medical Journal”
Abstract: Many patients with lung cancer choose not to have surgery because they believe that when lung cancer comes into contact with the air it suddenly spreads. Some of these patients refuse to listen when their doctors argue that surgery is only recommended when it is expected to be beneficial. Three medical doctors and Dr. Clinton looked at the medical history, social context, and Charles Sanders Peirce's theories of belief to trace the history, development and logic of this belief. Then they struggled for several years to find a publisher. The article finally came out in The Journal of the National Medical Association in August of 2009. This talk considers not only the belief in question but also the nature of collaborative work and stresses the need for persistence when trying to get an article published.

October 15, 2009
Location: 314 Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenter: Dr. Michael Butterworth, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication & Associate Director, School of Media and Communication
Presentation Title: “Sport, the Myth of Meritocracy, and the Election of Barack Obama”
Abstract: During and after the 2008 presidential election, one of the theories that explained the popularity of Barack Obama was that the success of African American athletes had paved the way for the election of a black president. It is fair to say that sport has contributed to improved race relations in the United States. From Jack Johnson to Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali, black athletes have challenged and thus weakened the structures of racism that characterize American society. Nevertheless, there is a popular perception that racism in baseball ended the day Robinson took the field or that the superstardom of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods provides evidence that African Americans have an equal chance to succeed on their own merits. There is considerable risk, therefore, of ignoring the structural aspects of racism in favor of an idealized democratic narrative. Accordingly, the argument that sport somehow facilitated the election of the nation’s “first black president,” merits rhetorical consideration. In this talk, Dr. Butterworth will map the articulation of sport to the election of Barack Obama, thus spotlighting this disconnect between the myth of meritocracy and the persistence of racial inequalities. As many observers already have noted, an Obama presidency is not a signal that the United States has now entered a “post-racial” society. Dr. Butterworth’s argument, then, helps to explain the rhetorical means by which such a notion is advanced, while also offering a reconsideration of the mythology upon which it is premised.

November 19, 2009
Location: 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenter: Mr. Mark Bernard, Doctoral Candidate, American Culture Studies Ph.D. Program
Presentation Title: "The Golden Avenger and the Dark Knight: Superheroes and National Security Cinema"
Abstract: The 2008 summer movie season was bookended by the blockbuster successes of two superhero movies: Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008) and The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). In addition to scoring a combined worldwide gross of over a billion and a half dollars, these films were also showered with critical praise that heralded the maturation of the superhero movie genre. Unfortunately absent from many of the discussions surrounding these films are their insidious ties to – and oftentimes endorsement of – the United States’ National Security policies. Mark Bernard will explore these connections by contextualizing the films within the genre of “National Security Cinema,” films that justify homeland security policies and military action abroad by depicting the US as vulnerable and under attack.

December 10, 2009
Location: 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenter: Dr. Katherine Meizel, Instructor, Ethnomusicology, College of Musical Arts
Presentation Title: “"California Dreamin’: American Idol, Hollywood, and the Apotheosis of the American Dream”
Abstract: Every summer, 100,000 young men and women crowd into sports arenas and convention centers around the United States, sing their hearts out for twenty seconds, hold their breaths, and hope to hear this congratulatory pronouncement: You’re going to Hollywood! Those happy few who do are sent forth, “golden tickets” in hand, to retrace the path of the ultimate American narrative—a story in which Manifest Destiny, the spirit of capitalism, and the allure of seizing the microphone lead inexorably West, to California. The journey fulfills more than Idol dreams; it’s centuries of imagining America and Americans, embodied on a millennial stage at Television City, broadcast weekly to 30 million viewers in the U.S. and to more than a hundred nations abroad. The televised singing competition American Idol reiterates old mythologies of migration and immigration, reconfirming deeply embedded ideas of Hollywood as the locus of the American Dream, as the site where that Dream becomes reality (or, at least, reality programming). This presentation addresses how the Dream and the Dream Factory, invented in times of national crisis, persist as models of American success—and excess—in the shaky new twenty-first century.

SPRING SEMESTER 2010:

January 21, 2010
Location: 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenter: Dr. Jeremy Wallach, Associate Professor, Department of Popular Culture

February 18, 2010
Location: 201A Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenter: Dr. Christopher Williams, Center for Popular Culture Studies Resident Fellow

March 18, 2010
Location: 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenters: Department of Popular Culture M.A. 2nd Year Graduate Students

April 15, 2010
Location: 207 Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Presenter: Dr. Satomi Saito (Asian Studies Program)