Published at Killing the Buddha on August 26, 2015. I got another tattoo. A black and gray owl with wise eyes rests on my right bicep. A locked heart lays on its chest. Its claws grasp the key. I get tattoos to mark the transitions, those shifts in my life that suggest nothing will ever be the […]
Published at Bearings on September 9, 2015. I tried for years to explain to my students how the memory of that day still stops my breath, and how I viscerally knew the world had changed. I think about George W. Bush’s certainty about the division of our world into good and evil. About his insistence […]
Published at Sacred Matters on August 28, 2015. I have a hard time watching The Walking Dead. I hate to admit this as a scholar of zombies, but I will anyway. The show is hugely popular with viewing audiences, and fans of zombies, who first proved skeptical of this melodrama with monsters, have come around. On […]
Published online at Chronicle Vitae on February 26, 2014. As my year off moves by slowly, I often wonder how I arrived at the situation I am in. Was there a pivotal moment that set me on this path? When did I begin to doubt that I would ever fit neatly within the academy? When did […]
Published by Women in Higher Education In April, CNN declared that America was in the midst of a “transgender moment.” Diane Sawyer’s interview with reality TV star and Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner had just aired, and television shows like Transparent and Orange Is the New Black introduced transgender characters. Laverne Cox was one of Time’s […]
The Zombies Are Coming! The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture (Revised and Expanded Edition), Blue Crow Books, 2020, Final Girl Books, 2023. From Kelly J. Baker, author of the INDIE-award-winning Sexism Ed, comes an account of how the U.S. fascination with zombie apocalypses has shaped American culture—and our very humanity. Look anywhere in […]