Author: Melissa Bridwell

If you think about it too much, there’s something almost embarrassing about it. Sociology textbooks are thick, pricey books that arrive in classrooms with about the shelf life of a phone contract, and universities spend millions commissioning, editing, and packaging them. However, since 2000, a 21-card deck created by David Gauntlett at theory.org.uk has reportedly been outselling conventional sociology textbooks, tucked away in a corner of academic culture. Not exactly to replace them. simply winning in silence. It’s difficult to ignore what that says about the publishing situation in sociology. The cards are not particularly difficult. The first thing that…

Reading something old again and discovering that it already knew what you were starting to suspect gives you a certain kind of satisfaction. Reexamining David Gauntlett’s writings from around 2001, particularly his ideas about how media works as something people actively engage with, struggle against, and use to create a version of themselves rather than as a passive delivery system, makes you feel that way rather quickly. It wasn’t a loud forecast. It wasn’t presented as a prediction regarding educational institutions or learning environments. However, the reasoning was present, silently waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.…

Someone in the back most likely rolled their eyes the first time a UCLA professor slid a small deck of cards across a seminar table and instructed graduate students to distribute them like a game. On a trading card is Judith Butler. David Gauntlett shrank to a rectangle the size of a pocket. Until you see a room full of first-year students actually start talking, it sounds almost disrespectful to the seriousness of media theory. It was later referred to by that professor as the best fifteen dollars spent on education. The quote went viral. And now, in a way…

Somewhere in an Ohio collector’s spare bedroom is a small, glossy rectangle that is worth more than a used car. It is housed in a tamper-proof plastic slab. It’s a card for trading. It might be a holographic Charizard. Perhaps it’s a rookie athlete, serial-numbered out of ten, frozen mid-jump. In any case, the majority of people ignore things like that. It turns out that a new museum in America is unwilling to follow suit. The project is using Theory Trading Cards as a design reference point for how a museum devoted to American ideas might actually look, feel, and…

When an industry changes in real time—not through innovation, but through financial and legal scheming—a certain kind of tension arises. For the past few years, the sports card industry has been experiencing this—quietly at first, then loudly enough to result in federal antitrust filings. It revolves around a rivalry between Topps, the card company based in Brooklyn that currently operates under Fanatics’ massive umbrella, and Panini, the Italian sticker giant founded in Modena back in 1961. The NFL is the particular battlefield. And most people outside of the hobby are unaware of how important it is. In early 2022, Fanatics…

The whole thing is so low-key that it almost seems embarrassing. Not an app. No campaign on Kickstarter. There isn’t any glossy packaging with a celebrity endorsement hidden in the back corner. A British scholar named David Gauntlett discreetly posted a set of printable cards (two PDF sheets totaling twelve cards) on the internet in 2006, but he somehow neglected to make them famous. And yet, here we are. Teachers of media studies are still looking for them nearly twenty years later, graduate students are still sharing the PDFs, and the cards continue to appear in scholarly articles that discuss…

When given a reading list for the first time, first-year students have a certain expression. Somewhere around the third unfamiliar name on the page—Foucault, Baudrillard, Stuart Hall—something behind those eyes silently turns off. That look is familiar to all lecturers who have stood in front of a seminar room. It’s not being lazy. The feeling of receiving a map written in a language you have never seen before is more akin to actual overwhelm. David Gauntlett, a media professor, made the decision to address this issue. Neither a simplified textbook nor a new lecture format was his answer. A deck…

Imagine a late Tuesday afternoon in a downtown Chicago conference room. There’s a certain corporate flatness to the overhead lights. Instead of filling out workbooks or watching a grainy video of actors navigating fictitious office conflicts, a group of mid-level managers are seated around a table. Rather, they have little laminated cards in their hands. rearranging them. reading them out loud. debating the true meaning of a card from time to time. The facilitator is grinning. It seems like something is working. This year, corporate diversity training programs have subtly incorporated theory trading cards, which are tangible, collectible-style cards printed…

In 1972, Rod Poteete wasn’t considering money. The scent of the wax paper, the satisfying snap of a rubber band around a brand-new stack, and the unique joy of discovering a card you’ve been looking for for weeks were all on his mind when he thought about baseball cards. When he was younger, he worked as a high school teacher in Pahrump, Nevada, and after school, he would just gather cards. It was not taken seriously by anyone in his immediate vicinity. The majority didn’t. Over fifty years later, that habit—quiet, obstinate, and nearly compulsive—produced something that no one in…

Collectors of trading cards are familiar with a certain type of disappointment. The email reaches you. You click on the URL. And for some reason, the EpicGuard 1,600-card storage box has already vanished even though the notification was received within minutes. Once more. The routine has become so repetitive that it almost seems scripted. The product page is updated. Social media learns about it. The inventory disappears within an hour, and a fresh group of collectors joins a waitlist that, if past performance is any indication, offers very little in the way of real promise. This is not a minor…