I keep forgetting that it is Thanksgiving in the U.S. This is not unusual since I really don't celebrate Thanksgiving. But, I do take the day off at home. In Denmark, it is any other day and I had (a wonderful) class discussing dystopia. But, in Denmark, American studies students are having a Thanksgiving dinner for 50 people and some people are celebrating Thanksgiving at least by eating, but it is not a thing here. (They have, however, adopted the Black Friday tradition, though they call it Black Day in the stack of junk mail that went straight to recycling.)

Denmark has plenty of holidays, most of which feature food or drink. All of them require plenty of food, and especially drinks. There are Danish holidays just for beer and just for cake. (A small selection of x-mas beer bottles are the backdrop in the picture above.) And in Denmark, there are many cakes, every sweet pastry is cake, and cake is almost always available. I love Denmark.

But I digress, below is a response I provided to an "Ask the Expert" feature for a campus magazine (pictured above, translated into Danish). I tried to keep it simple... but it was also an opportunity to reflect in new ways on old American traditions and holidays as well as how our traditions and holidays relate to Denmark.

Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?
There are so many ways to answer this question! I think most Americans would say that we celebrate Thanksgiving because it is a tradition and an opportunity to be thankful for what we have. However, we tend to be more centered on the activities of the day—eating, drinking, and watching football—than we are on the meaning of giving thanks. And Thanksgiving almost always means eating too much! Plus, Thanksgiving also means two days off of work and an extra-long weekend, at least for some of us. It also means the beginning of the Christmas holiday season and, in the last decade or so, “Black Friday” shopping deals. Every year Black Friday starts earlier and earlier, with some retail stores even opening on Thanksgiving Day.

As an American Studies professor, I tend toward a more cynical explanation (if my above explanation was not already cynical enough!): we celebrate Thanksgiving because it is a way to justify our mistreatment (and genocide) of Native Americans through a myth of equality and cooperation. Further, we see gender stereotypes play out as the women cook the food and do the dishes while the men drink beer and watch football and the children watch holiday-themed movies and television shows. But of course there are diverse iterations of this Thanksgiving holiday tradition, and even Native Americans celebrate a version of Thanksgiving.

Even with my critical views and vegan diet, I am guilty of indulging in the perks of the Thanksgiving holiday. It is a day when I don’t have to work and don’t have to leave the house and can stay in my pajamas all day. My husband and I can cuddle up and watch football or non-holiday movies. I even make a vegan “Tofurky” (a product manufactured specifically for vegans to enjoy the turkey tradition) and vegan stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy … and of course dessert!
 
How much does Thanksgiving mean in a Danish context?
Being new to Denmark, I can only answer based on the little bit I have learned since I arrived just over a month ago. My short answer would be that celebrating Thanksgiving is a very hyggeligt thing to do! This very “cozy” time with family and friends, eating and drinking and being warm by the fire is very much in line with the practice of this holiday in the United States. I plan to add more candles to my future Thanksgivings! (More on hyggeligt later ... and candles are very popular in Denmark.)

But another Danish context relates to something I learned from my American Studies colleague, Jørn Brøndal, about the early Danish settlers in America. He writes about Danish travel writers’ perceptions of the Indians they encountered on their travels, and in one of our classes he talked about how the Danish settlers to the New World participated in the genocide and removal of the Indians alongside other white settlers. So, perhaps the celebration of Thanksgiving also has a deeper meaning in a Danish context! At the very least, my experience so far tells me that the Danes have a lot to be thankful for!

When I got my ticket to “A Conversation with the President,” I was not so naïve as to think I might actually get to have my own conversation with Barack Obama. Granted, I am—like Obama—an eternal optimist and a girl can dream, of course.

But, no, this particular dream did not come true. Instead, it was as expected: after giving a talk for the 200 students attending the event, I was barely able to find a seat in the back row, which was still closer than I could ever imagine I’d ever get to the man, the myth, the legend. The students got to spend the hour standing on the stairs, but they may have had a better view.

Regardless of the view, I am still privileged to have had this opportunity to see and hear Obama, to be in the same room as he answered the questions of the CEO of Foreningen Business Kolding. He remarked about the comfort of Danish chairs (which I am in total agreement with) as well as the highly organized society of Denmark, which he attributed to the cold temperatures.
Since the event was a partnership between business and education, it was no surprise that Obama was asked about these topics. When he started talking about education, I started taking notes.

And here’s where my home institution and other American universities should listen up: when asked about the skills he thought students of today need for the world of the tomorrow, Obama spoke about the need for critical thinking and creativity. He highlighted the importance of learning to work with people and to develop empathy and understanding. He said that his advice to his daughters (if we assume that they might listen to him) is to be kind and to be useful, to “worry less about what you want to be and more about what you want to do.”

While he did not use the word “interdisciplinarity,” this is exactly what he was talking about.

He talked about how the most successful people are those who love what they do. If you focus on what you want to be, he argued, then you have “no center, no focus, no reason except to maintain the power that you have.”

Obama reiterated an argument that is not new: the kind of work we train students for—by asking them to sit in lecture halls, follow scripts, and spit back answers on tests—will be done by robots, by artificial intelligence. I’ll add that rather than see this as a threat, we should see this as an opportunity. Human beings will be freed up for higher pursuits and I’m with Obama in imagining what such a world might bring.

I think that the Danes felt inspired and it was certainly a breath of fresh air to hear Obama’s optimism about the future—his sights have always been on the long game, so to speak. His Obama Foundation, which he describes as a “university for social change,” has a vision of training young leaders to guide, steer, and organize “communities, nations, and the world,” creating communities of people across nations, in multiple fields, with a shared mission and values.

It was nice to soak in some optimism for an hour, but when I checked my Facebook feed, and I saw what was going on at home—the travesty of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings—the long game seems too far away. We’re going to need more than optimism to get through these trying times. I will remain optimistic that the long game is still in play, but an end to a culture that excuses and encourages sexual violence (among other insidious things) needs to end before we can set our sights on the promises of the future.

Apparently, I had to go all the way to Denmark, just to be in the same room as Barack Obama. Before the event, instead of listening to one of my distinguished colleagues speak and hanging out with the VIPs, I will be giving a talk for the 200 students who have been privileged enough to score a ticket to the event—some by departmental affiliations in business or American studies and some by a good old-fashioned lottery.

I’d like to say that I have been specially selected to give a talk to SDU students before the Obama event, but the truth is that I was one of only two volunteers and I had the most flexibility in my schedule. The students, it turns out, will be waiting in the campus library for two hours since they are not considered VIPs. In fact, I opted out of my VIP ticket to talk with the students—a place I am far more comfortable being—even if I still have to dress in “business” attire.

(Of course, I am still trying to figure out exactly what business attire consists of and I am guessing neither yoga pants nor my “fuck racism” shirt are appropriate. I was also told, quite plainly, that a skirt—my go to for anything that requires me to “dress up”—is not a good idea. I bought a blazer, so that should do it… as long as sparkly Doc Martens are close enough to business attire...)

So, while this “A Conversation With the President” event will most likely focus around topics related to business (given the sponsorship of the business crowd in Denmark), my talk will focus on popular culture and racism: “Barack Obama: Our Pop Culture President … and the End of Racism?” While I am a bit (read: extremely) nervous, I am also excited to have this opportunity to connect with many students I would not otherwise have contact with.

And if I might be allowed to do some very un-Danish bragging, if I can fit it all into 25 minutes, my talk is going to be quite entertaining and thought-provoking! And of course there is no pressure on me to give a pre-talk before hearing/seeing one of the greatest orators of our time. And there is no pressure for the tech to work for all my video clips. And there is no pressure to get on a train that morning and not get lost….

So, stay tuned! I will be posting a copy of my talk on my website www.cultureandmovement.com

Part of my Fulbright orientation was an introductory comparison between the Danish educational system and the U.S. educational system, including what we might expect from Danish students.

In terms of comparing the educational systems and experiences with students, I have found that some of the observations between Denmark and America don’t ring true to my experience as a professor at the University of Maine at Augusta (even though some resonate with my undergraduate and graduate experiences). There are certainly differences, but the distance between my American students in Maine and my Danish students in Denmark may not be as wide as it could be.

At Danish universities, there are no fraternities or sororities and there is no sports culture, particularly the kind you find at big American universities. So, while I got plenty of Go Cougs! and Beaver Nation! at Washington State and Oregon State Universities during my graduate studies, at UMA we don’t really have much of a sports culture and we don’t have a football team.

Related: much of Danish students’ social life takes place off campus. Since UMA is a commuter campus (or, rather, a set of commuter campuses), this rings true for my students as well. In both contexts, we work to try to make spaces and opportunities for students to socialize.

Few students live on campus in Denmark. UMA has no dorms so no students live on campus!

UMA has a confusing name. The University of Southern Denmark also has a confusing name, or set of names. The abbreviation of SDU throws us American off and I have heard the Danish name for the university, but have yet to pin it down with my developing language skills.

Danish students call their professors by their first names. One professor explained that when he taught at Mississippi State e could not get his students to call him by his first name, but in Denmark he can’t get them to address him formally. I have always asked my students to call me by my first name and feel very uncomfortable when students address me with the American version of respect.

While I have been told the Danes can be big drinkers, and there are even bars on campus (whether formal or informal), at UMA we are not allowed to purchase alcohol with university funds and we are rarely allowed to consume alcohol on campus.

I have been told: Here in Denmark many students don’t attend classes since it is not required. There is an understanding that Danish students are adults and they should have independence and freedom. It is the students’ responsibility to learn the class material so they can pass their exam at (or after) the end of the semester. Further, students may not participate in classes as fully as American students and may have a more ambivalent attitude toward their education. While attendance may be sorely lacking at UMA, and I have certainly encountered students who do not wish to participate, I do find that most of my students (who are “non-traditional” compared to the Danish) are highly engaged and invested in their educations. They have often sacrificed a lot for their education and end up with crippling debt.

In Denmark, there are high dropout rates, especially in the first year and many students just never finish their education at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate levels, even though that education is “free” and they are paid a generous stipend to be a student once they reach the age of eighteen. (PhD students are actually employees of the university with a full salary!) UMA suffers from a similar set of problems (low attendance and completion rates), but for what may (possibly) be an entirely different set of reasons. I will have more to say about these similarities and their fundamental differences in future blogs!

All of these observations are based upon my preconceived notions from research, conversation, and Fulbright orientation, so I am excited to see what more I learn this year… beginning with my first class on Wednesday!

When I wrote my applications for a sabbatical (spring 2018) and a Fulbright (Fall 18 and Spring 19), I expected to get neither. Instead, I got both. My proposed sabbatical project(s) ended up being very different, in part because I was not quite ready to dive into that particular project. And project directions always change. This is the case for my Fulbright as well.

My proposed Fulbright project resulted from my attempts to imagine this place I had not been and what I might like to learn. It was ultimately not one cohesive project, but reflections on the ways in which my Fulbright experience would complement and extend my work in three general areas: girls’ cultures, fitness cultures, and educational systems. My title: Consciousness and Movement in Girls’ Cultures and Fitness Cultures.

Teaching in a foreign educational system will certainly be a challenge and will, I hope, help me to develop my pedagogies and programs for American studies and interdisciplinary studies. I will also be co-teaching an American studies theory and methods course with one of my Danish colleagues; we started working on the syllabus when I was on sabbatical. Perhaps most exciting, I will also have the opportunity to work with graduate students for the first time, and I am already advising a B.A. student's thesis project about black feminism and Beyoncé’s Lemonade.
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When I had more time to really start doing some pre-Fulbright research about Denmark (again, during my sabbatical), the part of my project surrounding girls’ cultures and fitness cultures evolved into a more specific project that considers the Danish concept and practice of hygge (hoo-gah) and the concept and practice I have taught and studied (and preached and tried to practice) in the U.S.—self-care. I am interested in how Danes understand and practice hygge and how these practices and understandings can help me understand, develop, and extend the concept of self-care. My new working title is: Understanding Self-Care through Hygge (hoo-gah): An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Danish and American Culture.

Hyyge has no one-word translation in English, but is often understood as “cozy.” This simplification stems, at least in part, from the fact that hygge is not just a concept or a style or something you adopt for certain occasions or certain spaces, it is a foundational aspect of Danish culture and identity. In the U.S. and the U.K., we look to the concept of hygge to help explain why the Danes are cited as some of the happiest people in the world as well as to give advice on how to find this concept in, for instance, the design of classroom spaces and having a cozy lifestyle to survive winter. But this is, I think, a shallow understanding of a much deeper concept.

I’m excited to learn more about hygge and Denmark, and I plan to learn many other things along the way… I have already learned so much in just a few days!

When I teach American Studies to U.S. students, I often have to help them unpack the years of stereotypes and partial truths that they were raised on and brainwashed by, I mean, educated through. For some students, the critiques and questions of American Studies click right away and they usually take as many of my classes as they can fit into their program. For other students, the discomfort and discord is a constant struggle though almost all of them report that it was a worthwhile struggle.

My Denmark students have chosen to study America and I want to know why. I want to know what is different about the ways in which Danish students see and understand America, and what interests them about America as a subject of study—whether they are taking an undergrad class for elective credit or have chosen to pursue a graduate education in the subject.

How do Danish students learn about America—in school and outside of school? Are they critical? Curious? Confused? Will they be interested in the subject matter I will be teaching? (How could they not be: hip-hop and young adult dystopia?!) Or will they prefer the more conventional (and still fascinating) subject matter of American studies—the histories and the classics, for instance.

And, of course, I expect I will learn far more than I will teach—about Denmark, about my subject matter, about myself. While the American Studies I teach is “critical,” I wonder if I will discover a latent American exceptionalism that is part of the core of being an American. I wonder if my enthusiasm and passion and some of my less conventional approaches will scare them or engage them (or both).

While I am prepared to teach my subject matter, this is the least prepared I have felt this close to the start of a semester. In addition to not really knowing what to expect from my students, I also have not been to campus and I have not seen my office or my classrooms. I have no idea how many students are in my classes, and I don’t even know what day and time I am teaching one of my classes. While these questions will be answered soon enough, the bigger questions will take more work.
To quote Hamilton (which I will be teaching): “Let’s go.”

When my feet, and knees, and inner thighs betrayed me after 60 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, I renewed my love affair with our van. Apparently I am a #vanlifer though I did not know such a thing existed until my friend asked me if I was one. Apparently I am; however, my van life is much less fancy than most of the amazing van pictures that can be found by searching #vanlifers on Instagram.

We have no fancy pretty things, only an old comforter and mis-matched pillows and blankets. We have no extra insulation, no extra battery power, no bathroom, no kitchen (my kitchen is a cooler that plugs into the cigarette outlet and a Tupperware box that has a cutting board, knife, foil, etc.), no curtains, no extra heat or cooling. When it’s warm, we can roll down the windows and cover them with mosquito nets, held in place with magnets. However, mosquitos are kind of smart and figure out how to crawl under the netting between the magnets, so we will have to upgrade this feature. In the winter, we have sleeping bags and lots of blankets. We have woken up to find ice inside and outside our windows some mornings. We have some plans for curtains, insulation, and storage pockets, but we are also lazy and busy and what we have is functional.

Having a van that looks like a delivery van really helps with stealth camping. I should probably not list the places we have gotten away with sleeping in our van—don’t want to alert the authorities to the tricks of our trade—but we save a lot of money crawling into the back of our van to sleep on our thick, cushy camping pad from LL Bean. We’ve only been bothered by people a couple of times: once on the first night we slept in the back of the van (at a rest stop in New York) when some people tried to ply money from us at three in the morning and once when someone in Downeast Maine called the local Sheriff because our van looked “suspicious.” He checked our IDs and said there were no signs saying we can’t camp there so have a nice day.

We fit all of our summer and winter gear into this little van, though we have had to make adjustments at times and our winter gear and random junk is currently in storage with friends while we travel for the summer. But, my expert-packer can shove a lot of stuff into the storage space he built under the bed platform. The only thing that I’d really like to have in the van is a bathroom, but I survive.

(The slideshow above shows some of the places where the van has taken us in this last year plus--on my "unauthorized" sabbatical last winter and my real sabbatical this winter and spring, as well as on my resupply trips while my husband hiked the 100-mile wilderness of the Appalachian Trail last fall.)

My husband dreams of the things he could do with our van—or, another, better van—if only we had the financial resources. But I like the non-fancy, non-designer Ford Transit van that has been my home for several road trips and became my refuge when I had to stop hiking. When you can’t even stand on your own two feet let alone hobble the short distance to the bathroom, laying around in a van is a pretty nice thing.

So, while he hiked, I rested and read and was even able to do some restorative yoga in the back of my van. (Reclining butterfly with blanket props is quite comfy!) Some of my resting and waiting happened road-side. Some of it happened in the parking lot at the Warner Springs Community Center, a fabulous resource for PCT hikers. In addition to wi-fi, charging stations, an activity center, a backpacking gear store in an Airstream camper, bucket showers, foot baths, laundry services, and flush toilets and running water, the Warner Spring Community Center is a gathering place for hikers to rest, socialize, and re-stock with two free nights of camping

In my van, I was an outsider, an observer, but this is more about my typical mode of operation, and was not exclusive to me being in a van while the “real” hikers set up their tents in a field. No one really paid any attention to me or my van, even when I did weird things like walk around the track (unheard of among people who have just hiked 101.5 miles of the PCT!) and practice yoga under one of the big oak trees. Only one person stopped by my van to talk to me—a fellow New Englander thru-hiking the PCT who noticed our Maine plates (the one thing I feel is not at all stealth about our van).

Now that I have returned to my temporary home base and have a bed and the related amenities, I kind of want to go out to the carport and sleep in my van. I kind of want to live in my van, waking up to mountain views and river sounds and fresh air and solitude. A simple van for simple dreams….

Well, I guess I better let the cat out of the bag. … Not that I would ever keep a cat in a bag, of course. I mean I love cats, so I would if I could, but….

You see I am totally stalling for a few reasons…

First, this news that I am breaking still feels a bit unbelievable to me.

Second, it is really hard for me to tell my students and colleagues that I will be away not just for the spring semester sabbatical that I am currently enjoying, but also for a new opportunity that I have accepted.

So, here it is:
For the academic school year 2018-2019, I will be the Fulbright Danish Distinguished Chair at the Center for American Studies, University of Southern Denmark in Odense. This means, I will not be teaching at UMA during the academic school year.

I will, however, be teaching for UMA this summer and next summer, so there’s that.

Despite that I applied for this Fulbright back in August, the news that I was selected was a bit of a shocker. With each application update I was sure that I would receive a rejection at any time. I was kind of looking forward to rejection because it would make my life far less complicated.

But I also told my dean, colleagues, family, and friends that of course I would get this Fulbright because I feel so completely unprepared for it at this current juncture in my life. But, I guess that we are never fully prepared for the opportunities that life throws at us. So, to add to my sabbatical list of projects: I will be getting prepared to spend next year living, teaching, and researching in Denmark.

Thus, my adventures (and blogging) will continue beyond my sabbatical project/adventure and into my Fulbright year abroad. … But until then, there is much to explore!

A foundational question asked of all sci-fi fans: Star War or Star Trek? Of course, there is no need to choose. And if you had asked me a few days ago, I would have answered Star Trek without hesitation.

Despite being a professor of popular culture (more or less) I am never current on popular culture. Even the stories I love best are rarely seen before they come to DVD. When I watched the Hunger Games films, after much anticipation, I fell asleep every time. I could stay awake on re-watches, but I hate to admit that I did not make it all the way through Mocking Jay part two until a few months ago.

I wanted to stay awake only to see what choices they made at the end of the film, and whether these choices matched my thesis in my forthcoming book, Girls on Fire: Transformative Heroines in Young Adult Literature. They did. I could have said a lot more in my book about the way in which this ending illustrates just how much the absence of the voice and countercultural strength of Katniss makes the movies a rather empty and superficial representation of Katniss.

But such a critique does not ultimately matter because our culture is not ready for the voice and force of Katniss. It might just be enough to have the equal presence of girls and women in films to start making a dent in the patriarchal strangle-hold on popular culture representations.

Which brings me back to Star Wars. After the disappointment of the new Star Wars films, I did not pay much attention to the newer Star Wars films. I heard echoes of strong female protagonist, but I did not pay much attention. I hadn’t had a chance to watch The Force Awakens until visiting my sister and her family at the beginning of my sabbatical this winter.

We watched the film with plans to go see the new release of The Last Jedi in the theater during our visit. At first I was not excited about this plan, and I watched the film out of the corner of my eye while finishing breakfast. But soon I was hooked, with my eyes glued to the screen. I had found another Girl on Fire.

But Rey, as a Girl on Fire, is only the most obvious aspect of this film’s feminist activism. (And she is totally awesome.) Girls and women pepper the second film in a variety of roles. Women are old and young. Good and evil. They are leaders and heroes. They solve problems and they make mistakes. They are present. They are stock characters. They are role models.

Such representation is exactly what I argue and illustrate in Girls on Fire: Transformative Female Protagonists in Young Adult Literature. We don’t look to girls to lead us—in the present or the future—because we have not been given the opportunity to see girls and women outside the narrow confines of sex symbol and side story.

Before the film began, there were a variety of sci-fi themed films with Girls on Fire at the helm. There were, of course, plenty that did not feature girls at all, but we don’t have to be and do everything. We just have to get the opportunity to be seen as equals, to be equals as the norm rather than as the exception.

The Baby Boomer generation is having trouble accepting equality as fact. Generation X is trying to live within contradictions. But we can see hope when we see that the next generations see women in the world at every turn and in every position. Girls and women are the phoenix rising from the ashes of a world that has silenced us for too long.

In my forthcoming book, Girls on Fire: Transformational Heroines in Young Adult Literature, I conclude by considering “Utopic Visions for Dystopian Realities.” While the constant storm of Trump’s Presidency makes my book relevant in many ways, the recent news around Steve Bannon is exactly what I address in my conclusion. Below is an excerpt from my book. In fact, this is the end of my book. We all need a little hope; and we definitely need to talk more about a vision of the future where social justice has shaped our lives, culture, country, and world.
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In his speech to his supporters at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, on July, 25, 2016, Bernie Sanders passionately declared that “We want nothing less than the transformation of American Society.” His message was timely, and especially appealed to young people. While it is clear that Bernie’s vision of transformation is progressive—it seeks equality and justice and an end to racism, sexism, homophobia, and all those other liberal policies—exactly what this transformed society looks like, is not clear. Nor is it easy. It will take work—a kind of world-building. This is the work of the future.

Meanwhile, similar words can have a different vision. Heather Digby Parton writes, “[Steve] Bannon is a radical white nationalist whose main objective, as he has openly admitted, is to blow everything up — essentially to destroy the existing social and political order.” In his first public appearance after Trump’s election, Bannon reiterates the “unending battle for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’” (Rucker). Bannon’s words are more radical, but they do not sound all that different from Bernie Sanders’s words. Radicals on the left have also used the language of, for instance, blowing up the establishment. These are words that can inspire the disenfranchised (for instance, black people) as well as those who perceive themselves as being disenfranchised (for instance, white nationalists). Bannon’s words alone do not reveal the sinister motives and ideologies behind them that are so different from what Bernie Sanders’ words mean. After Bannon blows everything up, Parton continues, “What that leaves us with after the smoke clears is anyone’s guess, since he is notably vague on the endgame.” Here too, the future is uncertain. The vision of the future, after leaving the “existing social and political order” in ruins is vastly different for Bernie Sanders compared to Steve Bannon, but neither future is spelled out.

We might understand these two futures in the terms of Utopia vs. Dystopia. Bernie’s future is a utopia. We have a difficult time finding utopia in the U.S. and in our fiction—one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia and utopia can quickly turn to dystopia. Using YA dystopia as a lens is far more helpful. For instance, the futures that Girls on Fire navigate are always a result of forces that are already in process—the environment, our global health, political corruption, social chaos. The world that Bannon seeks to create is the world we find in YA dystopia. In fact, Bannon is a perfect model for almost any of the evil hegemons as well as the corrupt power structures we find in YA dystopia’s fictional futures. He has been compared to Darth Vader and Satan and has said in response, that “darkness is good” (Tani). But these comparisons might be giving him too much credit. His attempts to impose chaos might not be effective, and can remind us that, as Dustin McKissen argues, “If what we are looking at is a government with no one at the wheel, then this is an opportunity for each of us to step up and take our places as the real authors of history.” And if the person, or people at the wheel are pure evil, as they often are in YA dystopia, we need Girls on Fire even more.

Utopia has its value toward imagining more, but dystopia reminds us of the urgency of the present. Rebecca Solnit notes that transformations “begin in the imagination, in hope” (4). Dystopia keeps us accountable, reminds us of our collective responsibility. Dystopia even gives us hope, perhaps a more realistic vision of hope than utopia. Solnit describes hope in ways that mesh with dystopian stories: “Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed” (4). Dystopia does not take for granted the progress of the past because this progress has, at least in part, shaped the dystopic world. Girls on Fire know that if they fail to act nothing will change. Solnit continues, “To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable” (4). Girls on Fire are a source of hope; and we all have a stake in the future. But we also have to live in this world and keep it “inhabitable” for the future.

When the lights go out, who will be left to find a new source of light, to discover that human element of fire again?

The Girls on Fire are keeping the fire burning, stoking the fire and keeping watch to ensure that we don’t burn out or burn up.

“Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!”
—Katniss in Mockingjay

“And it would do nothing at all. It would change nothing at all. It would move no one at all, and so it really wouldn’t be art, would it?”
—June in The Summer Prince

“We were going to change how people think…. You can’t transform a society with violence, Ashala. Only with ideas.”
—Ember in The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf

American dystopia is a long-standing tradition, and Trump’s appearance on the scene of American politics has inspired many references to dystopia (like on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and in liberal campaigns). But we have long been a dystopia in the United States, and many brilliant authors have shed light on this quality from a variety of angles. War, apocalypse, unchecked technology, disease, climate change, natural disaster, invasion, slavery, violence, reproductive slavery, sexual violence, decimation, devastation.

When we talk about American dystopia today, we talk about George Orwell. We talk about the classics. We talk about men and power and the end of the world. And Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale is back on the bestseller list and being made into a television series in Trump’s dystopia. We need to look to other stories as well. We need to tell more stories.

The major issues of our times point toward a country, and a world, that we can find in the books of Octavia Butler, Suzanne Collins, Sherri L. Smith, Ambelin Kwaymullina, and Alaya Dawn Johnson. Many “Girls on Fire” tell us stories that speak to intersectional futures—to multifaceted ideas, people, and movements and to the possibilities of change in many possible futures.
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This collection seeks critical and creative explorations of dystopia: short stories, essays, graphic art, interviews, poems, testimonials, or any format that uses dystopia as a means for understanding the present moment. This collection seeks the stories, the images, the ideas and ideals of “Girls on Fire”—to inspire hope, vision, and action through the power of dystopic visions. To get us all through the fear, disappointment, anger, and anxiety.

Tell a compelling story that sheds light on our present moment and inspires us to work for a better future. Write a scathing commentary that exposes the problems of the present and the possibilities of the future. Capture a moment, an image that speaks to today’s dystopia. Imagine a manifesto, a moment, a movement. Create an image that moves us and makes us think. Use your arts—your mind and your heart and your skills and your training—to speak back to the present through the lens of tomorrow.

Imagine what the future of America looks like—30 days, 4 years, or several decades or centuries into the future. How has Trump’s reign shaped our cities, the country, the world? How have we been divided; how have we been united? What is the state of the climate, our social and cultural institutions? What dystopic future grows from the present moment? What challenges do people face? Where is there hope? What are Girls on Fire making from this future?

This collection is intended as a sort of companion piece to (working title): Girls on Fire: American Dystopia and Intersectional Futures, Sarah Hentges’ forthcoming book from McFarland Publishing, Inc. This book explores the ways in which young adult dystopian texts with female protagonists can inspire social justice. It considers foundations and possibilities. It looks to “Girls on Fire”—in fiction, and in life—to lead the way to a better future.

See http://www.cultureandmovement.com/ya-dystopia.html for more information about Girls on Fire: American Dystopia and Intersectional Futures

pdf call for submissions
5,000 words maximum. Images should be high quality.
Inquiries and ideas can be emailed to sarah.hentges@maine.edu
Submit to: sarahdwh8@gmail.com by January 20, 2018

This thinking woman also likes to eat and drink and hike and snowboard. So here’s a few things that I really appreciate and probably think too much about. Most of them are food places, but I try to represent a diverse range of my favorite things:
 
Ranchos Cosina in North Park, San Diego. I grew up on Mexican food that was mostly vegetarian. But after being vegan, Mexican food is just not the same. But it is at Ranchos Cosina. I could not stop telling people about how much I loved this restaurant.
 
The Arcata Tofu Company who makes the best ever smoked tofu spread (and lots of other yummy tofu). I would eat this with Triscuits every day if I could. Heck, I would eat it straight from the container with my finger (and I did).
 
Other people’s dogs. I would name them all, but I would not want to spell names wrong or leave anybody out. I will also not name the dog that ate my loaf of cheesy bread, bag and all. I should have known not to leave it within reach. Two months before leaving for this trip, we lost our very spoiled and very loved 10 ½ year old dog. We were pretty devastated. Spending time with other dogs was the best therapy we could find. Dogs are hilarious and full of unconditional love.
 
Montana. I am in love with you. To be continued.
 
Sweet Art’s in St. Louis, MO. Our first visit with an old friend. He had no idea that by taking his vegan friends to the vegan café around the corner, he was also taking me to a café that was built on the same ideas as my teaching and research. Menu items named after bell hooks and Octavia Butler! Seriously?! And, vegan pancakes. No further explanation needed!
 
My nephew’s punk rock band, Let’s Face It, playing in Encinitas, and being able to see him play before heading off on the next leg of the trip.
 
Stories. We saw a lot of family and friends that we have not seen for a long time. While our stories got a bit stale being told and re-told, we shared memories and collected many new stories. I love stories.
 
Favorite National Park: Bryce Canyon. (Least Favorite: Zion)
 
Favorite ski resort: Brundage (ID) for the snow and terrain, Deer Mountain (SD) for the atmosphere and for being the place where I had the epiphany that I actually know how to snowboard.
 
Books on tape. I was skeptical. I should not have waited until the trip back to listen! Twelve hours of “Understanding Japan” and four hours of “Between the World and Me.” The latter was a moving, poetic piece of non-fiction that is still on my mind. The former might just inspire another epic trip!
 
Having a hotel room with two bathrooms. I never imagined such a thing.
 
Seeing all of my friends and family and the many different parenting styles. How people parent is a direct reflection of personalities and values. I know so many great parents and met so many amazing kids! I danced and did yoga with Maya and Lumika and I played “sleeping,” which turned into flying on a plane to Africa, and other random imaginary adventures.
 
Hot tubs, hot springs, steam rooms. How do I live without these?
 
Our van. The most comfortable night’s sleep, even at random rest areas. I missed the van when we stayed in hotel rooms. I kind of want to live in it.
 
Coming home and realizing that I had cleaned the house a lot more than I remembered. It was not a disaster. After admiring so many other people’s neat stuff, it was nice to be back with my neat stuff.
 
There are so many favorite things that I cannot list them all here. But I have a rich collection of memories and a thirst for more.

After I posted my first blog, my mom commented that I was on a thinking woman’s vacation. And after a couple of blogs one of my aunts sent me a glowing praise for making her think too much. I like to think. For me, having the space and time to think and write is part of the appeal of a vacation. And, of course, I was working on this vacation, so my students’ final work inspired my thinking. And my course development for spring gave me plenty to think about. And the space and the time, as well as the coincidentals, made me think with leisure.

So, in addition to my more developed blogs, I have been thinking about a lot of little—and not-so-little—things:

I have been thinking a lot about climate change on this trip... dying forests, disappearing lakes, signs reminding people to conserve water, the waste of food, the overuse of paper products, the lack of recycling outside of National Parks, the smog-enhanced sunsets.... I can see how easy it is for people to divorce their over-consumption from the bigger problems of climate change. Climate change is not a myth, and its effects are already a foregone conclusion. This does not mean all is lost; it only means we have to work harder to mitigate the circumstances.

And a lot about the importance of staying connected with friends and family, both of which I can be better at. Coming back together with old friends often feels like we were never apart. But then I just think about how much I miss them.

And a lot about self-care and the importance of taking time away from work—regularly and sometimes for extended periods of time (like more than a day!).

And time more generally. Being in a time bubble, jumping from one time zone to another and back again, how time stretches and compresses, how I am so fortunate to have all this time—to have made all this time—and how to hold on to that time and then let it go. And then remember it enough to find this time again, and more regularly.

And a lot about prison and other fucked up American institutions. We watched the second season of Orange Is the New Black in a few days’ span after hearing that one of my students was sent back to prison to finish her sentence. I was devastated, but I wrote her a letter immediately reminding her that she is an amazing human being with a lot to offer this world. It is a small thing in a big world of problems.

And about being old. In 2016, I turned 40 and many of my friends are around the same age or older. We all feel the same “age” we were when we were younger, but our bodies are getting older and our lives have changed to show our age—our jobs, our children, our health, our dreams. We spent many days hanging out with “old ladies” and playing card games. They also like to talk. So, I learned a lot about aging bodies, retirement, families, death, community, and so much more.
 
About how hard life is for so many people—for all of us. We all have struggles, desires, and stumbling blocks. But I have also thought about how all the people I know also have it pretty darn good.
 
And in all of this thinking I tried not to worry too much about my colleagues working themselves to the bone. I also tried not to worry about all of the work I have to do when I return. Like always, it somehow always gets done.
 
I haven’t been thinking about the most immediate world of problems—the election, the impending change of power. That world was a different world while I was on my trip. It was on pause. The problems of that world are not new; they are why I teach and write and spend all my spare brain space thinking.
 
I also tried not to think too much about how nice it would be to just be able to travel and write and teach yoga and never have to think about anything ever again!

We traveled 5,081 miles to get to San Diego. Maine and San Diego are about as far away as one can get in the continental U.S. I spent, roughly, 20 years of my life in California. I have not been back since moving to Maine.

In 2009, I moved from Washington state to Maine. I clarify Washington state because when you say Washington in Maine people assume you are talking about D.C. And when I talk to anyone who is not from Maine about Portland, they assume Portland, Oregon. In Maine we can’t help but assume Portland, ME in conversation; it is the largest city and the hippest destination in Maine.

Maine is a big state, but it is also a small state. It is an old state. I can feel the weight of history in Maine. Maine is heavy. Maine is made up of a lot of small spaces. Many of these are beautiful spaces. In its relationship to other parts of the east, it is beautiful and unique. Some people I meet when I travel don’t even know that Maine is a state.

Many of the people I meet in Maine have never, or rarely, been outside of Maine. Some have been to Boston or Canada or, maybe, Florida. Maine is a larger state than I expected when I moved there, and many people in Maine regularly travel two or more hours to get somewhere else in Maine. And it is a long way to go to get out of Maine, or New England.

If you are from Maine, you are a Mainer. If you aren’t, you are “from away.” People I know who are “from away” are often people who have specifically chosen to live in Maine (for any variety of reasons). Maine can be a great place to live and there are things I love about Maine. But if your heart is in the West—in Mountains and valleys and big trees and the flat forever of the Pacific Ocean—Maine, and the east more generally, can never compare.
*
Before moving to Maine I had spent my childhood, and most of my education and professional life, in the West. Born in Mountainview, CA; raised in El Cajon, CA; college in Redlands, CA and then Arcata, CA. Graduate school in Corvallis, Oregon and then Pullman, Washington.

And a brief stint in Moorehead, Minnesota—my first job as an assistant professor.

As a child I had been to Pennsylvania to visit my grandparents, uncles, and cousins a few times. We flew there, but we drove into Ohio to feed the fish at the Spillway.

Visiting my mom’s family I also traveled to Bakersfield, CA and Davis, CA. In high school I attended a week-long awkward youth leaders conference in Washington, D.C. and spent an awkward weekend at Pepperdine University.

There are a handful of other places I visited as a child, mostly in California, and places I probably have forgotten. But, my lists here illustrate one thing: I have been a west coast girl. I knew very little of the east.

This brief list also illustrates that travel was a pretty regular part of my childhood, and was certainly something I took for granted. I had the privilege to see different parts of my home state and my country, but we also travelled out of the necessity of seeing a family that was divided between the east coast and the West. I did not see a lot of east, but I knew that I loved the West. That too, I took for granted.

People who have not been to the West really cannot understand what they are missing; they cannot feel and see the difference. They do not crave mountains. My old California friend, who now lives in the Fingerlakes region of New York, knows exactly what I am talking about. I am not the only displaced Californian who dreams of mountains and ocean.
*
Getting out of Maine was a much needed shift in perspective. In Maine, every inch is owned, every perspective limited. Other places are becoming more and more like this, but in the West you can still see miles of nothing surrounded by big mountains, big sky, big water. The Atlantic might be big water, but it cannot meet the massive horizon and setting sun of the West.

I had been missing the West, dreaming of mountains and the Pacific Ocean, of open spaces. I thought I could live without these things, but I can’t. I thought that maybe I was romanticizing the West, and maybe I am, but this trip reinforced the differences between east and West. The sameness is a subject for another blog. We are all, after all, Americans.
When we were still a couple weeks away from home, we hit 10,000 miles. We were still in the middle of tall mountains and big spaces. It is a feeling that really cannot be described, but I hope that all of my students, colleagues, friends, and family who have not been to northern California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana will have the opportunity to go to these places, if only for a shift in perspective.

It was mostly coincidence that my recent epic road trip coincided with the timeline from a few days after the election of Donald Trump for President to several days before his inauguration. I write this with only another day before shit may hit the fan.
Instead of being mired in hopelessness for the last couple of months, instead of storming the streets with my comrades, I was pursuing the very American dream of freedom—the very stuff of hope. As frightening as the election of Trump is for a variety of reasons, I have felt nothing but hope.

Perhaps it is my familiarity with dystopia or my critical American studies lens. Perhaps it is because I had more than 60 days and 11, 469 miles to see and experience a wide stretch of America, including 20 states and 15 National Parks or Monuments as well as beaches and hot springs and interstates and abandoned buildings and diverse people and ski resorts and the Mexican-American border.

America is deep and wide and we’ve been there before. The climate on the other hand…. I only slightly digress, but my point here is about hope. In the spirit of hope, I share a collection of essays that reflect upon my travels. I have posted these individually, but collect them here as a set.

Two I posted while traveling:
Musings on the Geographical Center of the U.S. and Making America Great Again
Reflections on Privilege and Border-Crossing

And several more I worked on over the course of the trip:
Making America Great Again: Musings on East and West        
The Thinking Woman’s Vacation
A Few of My Favorite Things…
 
And the culminating piece:
The Unauthorized Sabbatical: An Exercise in Self-Care and Professional Development

And, so, it is back to work for me. But back to work means doing what I can to hold my country accountable to its dreams, to work toward social justice, to take care of myself, and to continue to have hope.

PS: I include a selection of images that are generally representative of the places we traveled throughout this series of blogs. Enjoy!

When I was a girl, my family went to Mexico with a group of church friends to do volunteer work at an orphanage in Mexico. I remember getting a kind of debriefing by one of the adults, probably my mom, before we went. I don’t remember her exact words, but she told us that the kids there do not have what we have. She told us that the people we are helping are poor and that they don’t speak English. But, she said, the word no means the same thing in English as it does in Spanish. So, if there is a situation where you are uncomfortable, just say no.

They also told us not to drink the water.

There was another girl named Sarah (my same age and one of my forced church friends) who was blonder than me, richer than me, cooler than me.* Her family regularly did such volunteer work. I remember watching her interact with the kids, letting them touch her hair. She looked like a Barbie doll being played with. I also remember saying no a lot. I felt uncomfortable and out of place; I wanted to do work, but we were not given work to help with.

This was the first time I had come face-to-face with abject poverty. I did not know what to make of it. I did not understand what made those kids different from me. I did not understand what made this place different from the place that I came from. And I did not understand why the people that I traveled to Mexico with had to be so arrogant and self-satisfied with their charity and goodness. They lived in luxury and they acted like a day in Mexico erased their privilege.

Of course, this is my interpretation and language looking back 30+ years. At the time, I did not have an understanding of the form and function of privilege. I was not asked by my education and profession to examine my privilege at every moment. I had not developed the white guilt that keeps so many white Americans on the defensive. I only knew that I was uncomfortable with the way that Sarah acted toward the Mexican kids.

These lessons from Mexico have continued to echo throughout my life. Examining my privilege, teaching my students to examine their own, are ongoing processes. Most of my students have pretty hard lives, but of course we all have privilege relative to someone else, and that someone is not always somewhere else.

~
As I travel back to the place I grew up (and back to Mexico) and reflect upon these childhood experiences, I am also reading Roxane Gay’s book of essays, Bad Feminist. (I love this book!) In “Peculiar Benefits” she writes about her own reflections on privilege, which echo mine: “We tend to believe that accusations of privilege imply we have it easy, which we resent because life is hard for nearly everyone. Of course we resent these accusations.” I worked through the resentment (and guilt) phase as an undergrad, but my entire PhD education was spent navigating what Gay (and many others) refer to as the “Game of Privilege” (or the “Oppression Olympics”).

“Too many people, “she writes, “have become self-appointed privilege police . . . ready to remind people of their privilege whether those people have denied that privilege or not.” This policing is especially prevalent in the online world, Gay notes. In my own experience and observations, this policing keeps people on the attack and on the defense. Attacks often come from insecurity, jealousy, and misplaced frustrations. Individuals are called out and we forget the larger system that makes privilege invisible. Gay argues that “we need to get to a place where we discuss privilege by way of observation and acknowledgement rather than accusation. We need to be able to argue beyond the threat of privilege.” We need to get to this place together.

~
Don’t get me wrong. It is immensely important to acknowledge our own privilege and not enough of us do this. (And, really, it can be tempting to want to beat that recognition into some arrogant assholes.) My work as a professor of American studies and women’s studies requires me to examine my own privilege and point out the privileges that many of us share. There is always someone with more and someone with less. But Gay’s arguments are helpful here as well: we need to “understand the extent of [our] privilege, the consequences of [our] privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from [us] move through and experience the world in ways [we] might never know anything about.” We do not, she argues, need to apologize for our privilege.

This negotiation can be a fine line. It can also be difficult to understand the ways that “people who are different from [us] move through and experience the world” if we do not have the opportunity to learn about people who are different from us. And, it often takes at least a modicum of privilege to be in situations where we can learn about different people’s experiences. And, of course, having our actions and inquiries policed for privilege can stunt the process. But, respect, humility, and a lack of romanticization can go a long way.

~
Today I have the privilege to be able to arrange my schedule so that I can travel while still working my full-time+ job. Travel itself is a privilege, as one of my students reminded me when I shared my mid-trip mini-bout of depression with them in an email. I have the privilege to cross the Mexican border relatively easily, and I have a passport to return to the U.S. a few days later. I will be full with as many tortillas and avocadoes as I can eat and I will have the one bottle of Kahlua I am allowed to bring back. I will have spent most of my time in relative comfort, making footprints on a mostly empty beach.

I also have the privilege to work countless hours a week, to never stop working, to work through summers that professors have “off.” (I haven’t taken a “vacation,” let alone more than a few days away from work, in more than seven years.) I have the privilege to be underpaid and to use my hard-earned salary to buy food and supplies for my students when the budget won’t cover it. I am not that much different from most of my colleagues. We do this work, in part, because we have privilege and we have decided to use what little power we have to make a difference in the lives of the people we serve. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we burn out quickly.

If I mired in guilt over my privilege I would not be available for late-night emails and emergency texts from students. I would not be able to serve those who are trying to better understand themselves and the world around them, let alone better understand those whose lives and experiences are different from theirs. I would not be able to create opportunities for my students that they would not otherwise have. I would not be able to draw their attention to the structural inequalities that perpetuate privilege and oppression. I would not be able to equip them with tools to develop critical consciousness and the confidence to fight for what they think is right.

I would not be able to enjoy a few moments of sun and beach, and the privilege to be able to reflect upon my privilege in the middle of my working vacation.

 
*Side note/background: I grew up in El Cajon, California, which is a short drive to the Mexico border. The only other childhood trip  to Mexico that I remember was to a beach house that Sarah’s family owned or rented. There, we were surrounded by Americans enjoying the surf and sand. I got a wicked sunburn. As a teenager I went to Tijuana to drink once. We walked across the border. This was about my extent of my experience with Mexico, at least on the other side of the border. Mexican food was our favorite food. Mexican American girls were my friends, classmates, and teammates. Mexico was a neighbor and we shared people and customs. Still, I could often feel an invisible divide and the inequalities were clearly observable even from naïve/innocent eyes.

We left Bangor, Maine in our Transit Connect cargo van a few days after Trump was elected 45th President of the United States. It was purely coincidental, really. Before laving, we would joke about what kind of American we would be driving across depending upon the outcome of the election.

But it’s the same America. And it’s already great, but (of course) it still needs work.

After hours and hours of driving to get to my American Studies Association conference in Denver (staying in somewhere, NY; Avon, OH; St. Louis, MO; middle of nowhere Kansas; and Westminster, CO), we spent a week traveling through state and national parks and camping in Utah and Nevada. We saw big cities and small towns, developed toll roads and interstates and America’s Loneliest Highway across Nevada.

After my conference, we car camped and visited many places including: Colorado National Monument, Arches National park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, and Great Basin National Park before arriving in Lake Tahoe on the California/Nevada border. These are amazing places with dramatic heights and depths where the signs of wind and water and time remind visitors how tiny and temporary we are.

These National Parks are our legacy. A project of our past that looked forward to our future. They are tightly controlled and highly managed. They offer amazing vistas and unfathomable beauty as well as a glimpse of the tourist industry and packaging of nature—the best and worst of America.

Because that is what we are. We are both sides of the coin. We are the good, the bad, and the ugly. We are contradictory. We are principled and visionary and blind to our own weaknesses.

But between these highly managed spaces preserved for posterity there are wild spaces and neglected spaces. The National Parks are surrounded by National Forests, State Parks, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recreation areas, small towns, isolated houses, farms, and tiny little Indian reservations.* There are government testing areas (some sharing borders with the Indian reservations), tumbleweeds, cows, expansive private estates, shacks, resorts. These contradictory places are all American.

We are the house in shambles in Lebenon, Kansas—the geographical center of the United States—that displays a Trump/Pence sign a week after the election. I felt it was wrong to take that picture; my heart was breaking. We are also the well-to-do, Asian American teenage boy in a Trump/ence shirt goofing around with his siblings at the Arches visitor’s center. Both of these constituencies feel neglected by America. Making America great again is a call to narrow ideas and privileges of the past as well as a call to the future.

Also coincidentally, our trip was planned to return home days before the inauguration. Anything could happen before then! In the meantime, we’re going about our plan that began long before the election madness—a trip across and around the United States with only a rough itinerary. Some time away from Maine—with old places and new, rarely-seen family and very old friends, work and play, and whatever comes our way. Always plenty of work to be done, especially if we are going to make America great again. .... We might need a metaphorical geographical center or some kind of re-centering on this journey....

h*My trip across America (Maine to New York to Ohio to Missouri to Kansas to Colorado to Utah to Nevada) coincided with the “Thanksgiving” holiday. Passing through the deep red, green, blue, purple, and yellow natural landscapes of America’s National parks and state parks, scanning or old-school atlas (yes, the thing printed on paper, not that Google maps thing!) that shows small pink squares designated as Indian reservations, is a sobering reminder of the legacy that this holiday obscures.
I always put this holiday into quotation marks, often to remind my students to use their critical thinking skills. When we “break” for “Thanksgiving” I often ask students to reflect upon this holiday in relation to our course materials. Not always coincidentally, the work we do the week before this holiday break makes a direct connection to the ongoing lives and legacies of Native Americans. So, as we drove I was thinking about my students reading Shadows Cast By Stars, a YA dystopia novel that centers an indigenous girl. And I listened to a CD of the Burnnurwurbskek Singers, a Native American drum group, given to me by one of my students.
And I also thought about how, not far north of me, the battles over land and water and indigenous rights and the future of our planet rages on….but this is a subject that deserves far more than my little side note....

I meant to write this blog some time ago, inspired when Be Steadwell (B Steady) performed at UMA in connection with my Hip Hop class and sponsored by our Women Invigorating Curriculum committee and a Presidential minigrant. I have so many passions that it can be difficult to balance them all, and Hip Hop is one of those passions that is a common thread through all I do.

In the academic classroom, across disciplines, I use Hip Hop to talk about all kinds of issues from poverty to power to portrayals of women. In my fitness classes I use Hip Hop to inspire movement including two of my favorite Hip Hop yoga tracks: "Yoga Mat" by Stic Man and anything by MC Yogi. Hip Hop was what inspired me to dance outside the fitness box when I combined it with belly dancing.

But Be Steady's performance reminds me how important it is to promote women in Hip Hop by sharing knowledge of artists who don't get noticed in the narrow halls of mainstream Hip Hop. A recent interview with a graduate student working on a Master's thesis about women in Hip Hop rekindled my desire to share a few artists and observations about women and Hip Hop. But first things first...

Nicki Minaj and Monsters in the Mainstream

Whenever I teach about Hip Hop, students often argue adamantly that Nicki Minaj is an "empowered" female rapper, and she is often the only example, besides Beyoncé and Rihanna, students can cite. I am not here to argue that Minaj is or is not empowered (especially since empowered can mean many different things); instead, I want to use her as an example of the problems with mainstream American culture and Hip Hop culture. It is no secret that the few women who have found marginal success are conventionally attractive and often use sex to sell themselves and their work (like American culture demands as much as Hip Hop does). My students overwhelmingly cite Nicki Minaj as "proof" that women can succeed in Hip Hop. Many of my students find her to be "strong" or "successful" or "powerful."

Even in a song like "Monster" (Kanye West featuring Jay-Z, Bon Iver, and Rick Ross as well as Minaj), a song that is blatantly misogynistic and highly disturbing, she is seen as holding her own and being empowered. I even had a student post a video on a social media site with only the verse that Minaj contributes and with a very long analysis of the empowering lyrics supported by the image of Minaj's split personalities. When I asked her to contextualize her analysis within the song as a whole, she declined because she didn't think that the bigger context (a video where the only other women are dead, hanging from meat hooks and being dragged around or used sexually) really mattered because of how "empowered" Minaj was in this one part of the song. Later, when her mother asked her not to post such disturbing things because grandma might see, the student removed her post.

Women who want to achieve mainstream success also have to fit stereotypes and so sexual confidence can be exploited just as much as sexual exploitation. For instance, when Nicki Minaj adds her voice to songs by popular male artists, many women see this as positive. They see her as empowered, as playing the game with the big boys, as holding her own. But this empowerment is all in a context where she has to play their game to find a place for herself. For instance, as I was writing this I came across an article where a quote, "I have bigger balls than the boys" is featured in the headline. If the headline doesn't say it all, then the tagline does: "She has a body like Marilyn and a mouth like Eminem. No wonder Nicki Minaj is the hottest female rapper in the world." No matter how big her balls, she will only ever be a female rapper.

Female artists who play this game gain success. Those who don't will stay at the margins or will achieve success only in limited and limiting ways. So, maybe it is actually a positive that women don't gain mainstream success. Maybe this means that female artists aren't willing to play a game that makes them a victim, a margin, a window dressing, a receptacle. Because Hip Hop is a powerful and empowering art form, because it is a form of social and cultural criticism, because it gives voice to the voiceless, maybe mainstream success is not what female rappers should waste their time trying to achieve. Women rappers are already challenging mainstream conventions by their mere existence; their messages do so even more. Women with a voice, women of color with a voice, are a real threat to mainstream America. So, I share these examples because they shatter mainstream perceptions of women in Hip Hop.

Angel Haze

A student in my classes introduced me to Angel Haze. Her covers of "Same Love" and "Cleaning Out My Closet" take two popular and iconic songs and twist these songs to meet her experience as a black, pansexual female artist. Certainly the mainstream success of "Same Love" has exposed many people to Angel Haze since someone who is searching for Macklemore's song will inevitably find Angel Haze's version. This provides opportunities to educate--in and out of the classroom. When I show students Angel Haze's version of "Same Love," most remark that it is more real, more meaningful then the original. But, the original exploded Macklemore's career for a variety of reasons that speak to the politics of the mainstream. He is white and not gay, so the song is safer and can have "anthem" status. When Angel Haze adds her story to his message, she is exposing the limitations of the mainstream. Her identity, sexuality, and experiences with oppression are in the forefront, amplified with her talent for words.

Mainstream America is not ready for Angel Haze, and yet she recently recorded the theme song for the film 22 Jump Street. Another contradiction--this recording features Ludacris, lending it mainstream validity. In this song, she is singing for most of the song, and when she does rap she is rapping about the film's characters. She isn't seen anywhere in the videos I found for the song and no one listening would guess that she was anything but a "lesser" Nicki Manaj. So, again, mainstream success is limited. But it might be a start!

Invincible

This picture of Invincible is a powerful statement about women in Hip Hop as well as queer women. When I first saw this picture, it brought tears to my eyes. I bought Invincible's Shapeshifters album, a title that is exactly in line with my passions for flexibility, interdisciplinarity, and transformation. "Shapeshifters" and "Sledgehammer" are my two favorite tracks and I use them in academic and fitness spaces often. Invincible opens "Shapeshifter" with: "Music's not a mirror that reflects reality/ it's a hammer/with which we shape it." Taking this popular revolutionary phrase and adapting it to her purpose speaks to the power we have to shape culture if not also reality.

Her politics are clear through her lyrics, but more so through her community activism and the larger picture of the projects in which she collaborates. A co-founder of Emergence Media, she produces her own music as well as videos about topics like women in Hip Hop and gentrification in Detroit. She's also involved with Detroit Summer, "a multi-racial, inter-generational collective in Detroit that is transforming communities through youth facilitative leadership, creativity and collective action" and other such social justice work. Her music plus her activism only strengthens the hammer.

Eekwol

I don't remember how I came across Eekwol, an indigenous artist whose songs speak to experiences of colonization, violence, and freedom. Her songs "Too Sick" and "I Will Not Be Conquered" provide perspectives that "represent the truth." As her ReverbNation profile notes, "she holds a lifelong background of Plains Cree Indigenous music and culture, and invites the audience into a space of experimental hip hop unique to her land and place while respecting the origins of hip hop." Eekwol's work raises consciousness and connects communities.

She also speaks to the roles of women in mainstream Hip Hop in this interview/video that was created as a part of a seminar/presentation and a teaching tool for use in high schools. In educational settings, these artists can be used to make connections to our communities as much as they can be used to raise individual students' consciousness. Artists like Eekwol and Invincible combine art and politics in powerful ways.

Be Steady

Which leads me full circle to Be Steady, an artist I discovered via Words Beats & Life. I started watching her videos and songs and fell in love with her. I didn't really imagine that I would be able to bring her to UMA to perform. I was almost surprised when I booked her so easily. At first she seemed shy and humble, so when she started singing, and her voice filled our little event room, I was speechless. The first few minutes of her performance and her first song "Worthy," hooked the audience. (Fast forward a couple of minutes through my awkward intro and movement of the camera!) I often play this haunting song over and over.

From there, the performance unfolded with songs combined with commentary about her music--the art and the subject matter. She fielded questions from the audience and wove her answers into her performance. She addressed everything I hoped she would address--including questions of identity and sexuality. (Click here for part two of Be's performance). My students were so energized by her visit and shared her music with other students and through social media. Be Steadwell was an amazing performer, but because she was a down-to-earth person, her work reached students even more. Will she gain mainstream success writing songs about her love for girls? Probably not. Will her fans continue to love her music? Will she continue to evolve as an artist, to connect communities, and inspire people? Outside the mainstream, such growth and transformation are possible.

Hip Hop cannot be contained by the mainstream as much as mainstream representations limit what people know about Hip Hop. Our heroes circulate in different spaces. None of these women have messages that mesh with mainstream American expectations let alone the narrow confines of women and Hip Hop. But they are changing Hip Hop as much as their work is transforming minds and lives. All we have to do is listen... and pass it on.

In 2009 I was fortunate enough to have the experience of seeing Angelou speak at one of the largest events hosted by the University of Maine at Augusta. Students had dreamed big and worked hard to get Angelou as a speaker. We do not usually (ever?) have the budget for speakers of Angelou's fame or caliber. I will always remember that event, and her amazing, dynamic presence, but my "remembering" of Maya Angelou is not as a "hero" (as many people regard her).  My remembering is a lesson in critical consciousness.

As a complement and preparation to this event, in the spring of 2009, I taught a class about Maya Angelou. The event did not happen until late April so we had plenty of time to prepare. It was cross-listed between English, Women's Studies, Humanities (before we had an American Studies designator) and had multiple sites taught via compressed video. There were 40 students in this class and most were eager to have an opportunity to read Angelou's work and learn more about her. That's why they took my class. But this is not why I taught this class.

One student immediately dropped the class, noting that he thought this was a "read and write about it kind of class." We certainly read a lot--all of Angelou's autobiographies, all of her poetry, her short stories, her book of essays, and her children's books. We also watched videos of Angelou and considered her politics and her work as an African American woman writer. The opportunity to teach about Maya Angelou is an opportunity for engaged, critical, interdisciplinary education.

As my students know, I don't just teach about the great works or deeds of a person, even someone who is as great as Angelou. Instead, I asked students to consider Angelou in her social, cultural, and political context. I asked questions like "what is it about Angelou that makes her a 'hero' while other black women are vilified as dangerous or subversive?" And, "why I am I teaching this class about Angelou instead of a class about bell hooks or Angela Davis or Audre Lorde, for instance?" These are just two of the hard questions that we don't ask about our heroes.

I taught this class to give the students an opportunity to consider Angelou--her life and her work--deep and wide. And so even though I began the class proclaiming to not be a fan, and to not really love her work as her many fans love it, I learned a lot about Angelou and I really enjoyed reading her collected body of work. She certainly had a long, full life and has been an influential figure through decades of political shifts. She challenged racism and sexism and told her stories without fear or apology. She should certainly be on our list of heroes.

But we should see our heroes in more complicated light. The work I assigned for this class reflected the complicated nature I wanted students to explore. Students wrote academic papers, many of them analyzing her work and some of them critically considering her work in context. Some students took a stab at their own creative writing. Many dealt with their own histories of abuse. Students also created their own Angelou-inspired children's books. They were asked to share  what they had learned in class in a public setting, and many took Angelou into elementary and high schools. (And colleagues and I held a "Teaching Maya Angelou" workshop for teachers in three locations in Maine.)

The night of the event we had a "Welcome Table Potluck" where students could either make dishes from Angelou's cookbook or make their own recipes and tell their own stories. This remains one of my favorite assignments ever, and students brought friends and family to our pre-event potluck and post-event dessert and discussion. Some of us kept hoping that Angelou might make a surprise appearance, but I am sure she had no idea that this co-event was happening. I want to believe, for my students, that if she did, she would have stopped by ... at least for the grub.

The students embraced every assignment with passion that paid tribute to the works of Maya Angelou. One student even took on the project of collecting students' works and creating a book that was given to Angelou as a gift. The sad thing is, with all of this work that my students did, we don't know if Angelou ever received the book. Here's what happened:

When people hear that I taught this class and that Angelou visited campus, they assume I got to meet her. Not even close. (And I certainly didn't expect to meet her, ever, and I am okay with that.) I am not sure that anyone even ever told Angelou that there was a class being taught about her work. When I suggested that students write letters to her before the event, the organizers of the event pretty much freaked out. Because of stipulations in the contract (and no doubt due to her age), Angelou's visit was tightly controlled. There was a long list of don'ts and a limited number of people who could meet her. Any breech of this contract and they could walk away with our (very hard-earned) money. Understandable.

But what was not understandable to my students was why they could not present her with the gift of the book they created for her. Instead, the mayor of Augusta was invited to present her with the key to the city and the students' book was (supposedly) left in her backstage dressing area. I am sure that Angelou has received many, many such honors--the key to every city, the honorary doctorate, the accolades of millions. But, she may or may not have received a heart-felt collection of work produced by UMA students in her honor.

And this is one of the problems of heroes. The higher we hold you up, the harder it is for you to see the people. The more we scramble to provide appropriate honors (those that mayors and presidents deliver), the more we block out the honors of the little people who matter the most. I don't fault Angelou here but the layers of lawyers and keepers and contracts and event organizers and PR people who decide what an event like Maya Angelou speaking at a small, open-access university in Maine should be about.

I have been waiting for the opportunity to tell this story and, unfortunately, it is Maya Angelou's passing that has prompted me to share this "remembering." But it is an important lesson for all of our heroes--dead or alive. We made you heroes and we will examine every inch of your life and work so that we can better understand ourselves and our world. Then we'll look to see where we can make change.

Just when I thought that fitness was not on the American Studies Association annual conference program (see Yoga for a Cause), I attended the ASA Women's Committee session Saturday afternoon, "Critical Conjunctures of Debt: Women of Color,  Healthcare Disparities, and Advocacy." I was a little bit late. After two moving presentations by the other panel members, Shirley Tang and Jacki Rand, Koritha Mitchell gave the presentation I had come for: "Pay Yourself First and Pay It Forward: The Black Girls RUN! Project."

In Women and Fitness in American Culture I highlight the problematic aspects of the national healthcare agenda and the conversation around American fitness that we see in popular culture. I also highlight the ways in which fitness can help us work toward transforming these conversations and policies. Koritha Mitchell's presentation complements my work in important ways as her arguments about the bigger picture of American fitness mesh with mine, and she extends the conversation to speak specifically to black women's experiences, in all their diversity. At the end of the panel, chair and commentator, Alondra Nelson, remarked that it's about time that we consider health research in the Arts and Sciences. I couldn't agree more, and I hope that my work provides a jumping off point for many conversations, like those begun at ASA by professors Mitchell and Nelson.

Professor Mitchell framed her discussion of Black Girls Run! through a larger picture of American culture and politics, particularly the racism of "know-your-place aggression" seen in its most extremes in the recent Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride cases. These cases are nothing new, and they are not rare. In this climate, Mitchell argues, "exercise has become invaluable"; it is a way to avoid despair and to prioritize self-care while equipping others to do the same. This is particularly important for black women and other women of color who are devalued--body and mind--by American culture and whose lives are often wholly devoted to the service of others. As Mitchell argues, "energy is our most precious resource" and black women deserve to put themselves first. Preserving such energy is the only way to continue to give that energy to our families, our communities, our work, and to social justice.

She also frames her discussion in terms of the national debate about health care and the emphasis in American culture on health and fitness as weight loss. Mitchell's presentation was not the only one at ASA to make a connection between the government initiatives of "My Plate" and "Let's Move" and the limited and limiting representations of "health" and "fitness" that target African American women. (Karisa Butler-Wall presented her paper, "Risky Business: Race, Citizenship, and the Biopolitics of Debt in the 'Obesity Crisis.'") But the problems that plague black women's health are not individual problems; they are structural problems. As Mitchell argues, Americans are sedentary. Americans eat too much salt and sugar. Americans eat too much fast food.

After framing the climate and arguing the importance of self-care, Dr. Mitchell discussed the ways in which The Black Girls Run! chapter that she organized in Columbus, OH, in April of 2011, helps to mitigate these circumstances and transform the experiences of black women individually and in community. The story she tells is one that echoes and extends the stories I tell in Women and Fitness in American Culture. While I weave other voices and stories into my own, I also make it clear that my experience in fitness is limited by my geographical locations, my whiteness, my middle-class status, and other factors that shape women's individual and collective fitness experiences. We need more stories.

We need to take up more space. The work of Black Girls Run! takes place in cyber spaces as well as in real life. Mitchell notes the supportive environment that Facebook offers through its daily activity and the ways in which this organization continues to resist the notion that losing weight is motivation for exercise. BGR! adopts the important ideas that exercise is beneficial no matter what size a woman is and that exercise is punishment if it is linked to weight loss. These are important messages in a culture that devalues "fat" while blaming the individual for structural problems.

Perhaps the most important philosophy expressed through Mitchell's chapter of BGR! is the idea: "I am grateful I can move, so I am moving." This is the basis for feminist and mind/body fitness that I discuss in Women and Fitness in American Culture. Likewise, BGR! is flexible, supports beginners, and operates with a "no woman left behind" philosophy. Everyone crosses the finish line and everyone does the level of activity they are able to do that day. Members support one another on the run and in life; they challenge each other to be their best. And yet, Mitchell argues, there is no flexibility with a culture of excuses. (And she provides fun motivational messages like those on her Pinterest page.) BGR! leaders must be reliable and on time, and must not let weather control their desire to run. Ultimately, building a community presence means being accountable to that community. Strong leaders like Koritha Mitchell, make a difference.

As I note of my own work in the sphere of fitness, Mitchell argues that the work she does with Black Girls Run! makes her work in academia possible. Running is crucial for Mitchell's intellectual self, just as my practice of yoga and cardio/dance are for me. For both of us, this fitness space allows us to interact with people outside of academia, to connect with our community in meaningful ways. For Mitchell, this is an important space of connection since the two activities that allow black women to interact (traditionally, and in Columbus specifically)--church and activities for children--are not spaces Mitchell is involved with. Further, she notes that this work has "really driven home for me just how diverse black women are. If we didn't have racism," she notes, then black women might not have much in common.

Diverse women come together in fitness spaces, and the benefits of fitness communities cannot be overlooked or underestimated. As Dr. Nelson pulled together the threads of the presentations on this panel, she included a slide show with quotes from the Black Panther Party and Audre Lorde. In both cases, the importance of self-care and health as an integral part of the "aspiration and practice" of "the liberation struggle" were highlighted. Her role call of women in academia lost too soon was a sobering reminder that the importance of self-care is both an individual and structural problem and priority, particularly for women of color whose bodies and minds are undervalued and exploited. Health and fitness are issues that cross categories and disciplines and deserve a more thorough look from the arts and sciences, and from interdisciplinary, feminist inquiry, as well as from American studies scholars.

Josh Stolberg, the writer/director of the film Kids in America says, on the official website, that he made this film in order to “affect positive change.” The fictionalized story was created based upon the “real-life” experiences of “kids” who have been suspended or expelled from their schools because of the political statements that they have made. Three of these stories are offered in testimonials at the end of the film—one girl who attached condoms to her shirt to promote safe sex, one girl who wore a “Barbie is a Lesbian” shirt to class, and one girl who wrote a short story about a girl who falls asleep in class and dreams of shooting her math teacher. Each girl tells her story and talks about having the support of her parent(s) throughout the ordeal. This element of the film is powerful and potentially empowering to young people; however, the way in which this fictional story is created tells more about the biases of the writer/director and his inability to imagine a story or a film outside the confines of patriarchy and white supremacy than it does to model the “real” stories of “kids in America.”
 
The racial and gender politics of this film subscribe to the typical characterizations found in most mainstream teen films. For instance, despite the fact that all three testimonials are offered by girls, this film is focused on the rebellious-ring-leader white boy, Holden, who leads a group of “diverse” young adults in their struggles. His girlfriend, Charlotte, the passionate-political white girl fights well on her own, but often steps aside or supports Holden’s efforts. The rest of the group consists of the fat-pervert white boy, the outrageously-gay white boy, the blond-cheerleader white girl, the goody-two-shoes Asian girl, and the militant black-girl-with-attitude.  Each of these characters plays into their stereotypical roles in ways that are supposed to be funny, but mostly just expose the ignorance, if not racism and sexism, of the filmmakers. For instance, in a totally superfluous scene the cheerleader wears a skimpy outfit and seduces the captain of the football team to help with their plan. In another scene, Emily, tries to avoid police questioning by first claiming she “no speak-a English” and then offering a “spring roll.” When neither approach works, she offers “a licky licky.”  
  
What’s worse than the racial and gender stereotypes that this film relies upon for its humor is the ways in which the film skews the stories of teens who have been the victims of school authorities. For instance, the only gay character is not a girl, but a boy who is gay because of his love of musical theatre and his flamboyant personality.  Further, the girl in the film who gets
suspended for wearing condoms on her shirt is a cute, skinny, blond girl (opposite of the young woman who gives the testimonial at the end of the film) who makes this statement because she is the founder of the school’s celibacy society. The “real” girl’s similar statement was made because her mother had HIV before she died and she wanted to help protect her classmates from a similar fate.  In both of these cases, the “real-life” stories are white-washed and made more palatable to a mainstream U.S. audience.

Perhaps the filmmakers assumed that these representations would be over-shadowed by the representation of the favorite teacher who inspires and pushes the students—a black man who used to make documentaries and now teaches high school.  He is juxtaposed by the blond, white principal who acts as tyrannical dictator (Ann Coulter style). Mr. Drucker is a strong,
admirable character; however, in an outtake available on the DVD, he acts like a stereotypical (black) man as he stares at, and comments about, the principal’s back side as she walks past him.
 
There are some powerful aspects of this film, like the exposure of the growing fascism of school administrations (and the U.S. government more generally) and the power of “kids” to fight the power when they work together. However, these “kids” fail to fight for a specific cause. Instead, they only fight against the election of Principal Weller to the position of State School Superintendent. This film is steeped in liberalism as the students don’t fight for a vision for a better school or better society, but
against the local dictator. Further, they are successful in blocking Principal Weller’s election, but more importantly, their actions lead to college admissions for all of these middle-to-upper-class “kids.” Ultimately, Kids in America says more about adults’ limited visions than it does about possibilities for the future.