Author: Melissa Bridwell

Entering “Theory Trading Cards” into Amazon and seeing the autocomplete fill in before you’re done is almost disorienting. The reason this specific product shouldn’t exist in the first place is not that it’s shocking that people purchase academic tools online. This deck of cards, which is meant to be played like a kid’s trump game, features Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Anthony Giddens, whose works are feared by the majority of undergraduates. And yet here it is—searched, bought, reviewed, and seemingly cherished. The origin story is subtle enough to seem almost coincidental. In 2000, David Gauntlett, a media professor with…

The same scene can be found in nearly every American undergraduate sociology classroom: a professor pacing in front of a whiteboard, attempting to explain Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theory to twenty-two students who are obviously considering lunch. It’s a well-known struggle. Abstract theory has a tendency to bounce off young minds without making much of an impact because it is disconnected from anything concrete. This is likely the reason why some of the brightest minds in American sociology have begun to carry something unusual in their wallets: tiny, laminated theory cards that distill complex sociological concepts into something you can hold,…

Airport terminals are currently experiencing something subtly peculiar. People are looking at Hawaiian Airlines flight schedules in search of a trading card rather than prices, routes, or even the free Starlink Wi-Fi. A tangible, pilot-signed, rainbow-foil trading card that is only available to passengers on the aircraft. It seems like a ruse. And perhaps a portion of it is. However, if you take a few minutes to browse any aviation collector’s forum, you’ll see that threads are already brimming with pictures, trade offers, and in-depth inquiries about which pilots carry which cards on which routes. It’s got legs. On November…

Somewhere in a basement in suburban Ohio, or a garage in Pasadena, or the back of a closet in Brooklyn, there is probably a battered three-ring binder stuffed with Pokémon cards. The majority of those binders will remain unnoticed. But a small number of them — the ones with a first-edition Charizard tucked in a top-loading sleeve, maybe a bit creased, maybe not — are sitting on top of returns that would make a hedge fund manager shift uncomfortably in his chair. This isn’t a joke. Since 2004, Pokémon cards have posted roughly 3,821% in cumulative returns, according to data…

At a Brooklyn zine fair, laminated cards cover a small table. Not Pokémon. The Gathering is not magic. Rather, face-up on the fabric, you see a portrait of Guy Debord gazing back at you with that specific intensity of mid-century Europe in his eyes, beneath which is printed a single idea: The Spectacle. Hannah Arendt was beside him. Frantz Fanon came next. Walter Benjamin with a beard. In roughly thirty seconds, the seller—a graduate student wearing a jacket covered in paint—explains the entire concept: “They’re trading cards, but for theory. Thinkers are gathered by you. You gain knowledge. He pauses.…

On any given Thursday afternoon, you’ll probably find the typical chaos in almost any sociology seminar at one of Chicago’s major universities: stacked readings, cold coffee, and someone still debating Durkheim. However, a new source of conflict has recently surfaced between the textbooks and tote bags: a trading card with C. Wright Mills on it, and it seems that no one wants to part with it. It sounds almost ridiculous, the kind of thing you would write off as a novelty. However, there’s a feeling that what’s taking place here represents something truly intriguing about how students are currently interacting…

Almost all American graduate schools of education have a battered copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed on their shelves. After reading it once, the majority of students underline a few passages before moving on. That could be one of the more serious errors made in today’s academic environment. Paulo Freire was born in Recife, in the arid and harsh northeastern region of Brazil, in 1921. He didn’t think about theory when he was younger. He was keeping an eye on hunger. He was taking in the silence of those who had been told, in a hundred subtle ways, that they…

A waiting list exists. Even though it seems insignificant, it is worth pondering for a little while. A card-based learning series based on practice and creative thinking has somehow created more demand than twelve U.S. institutions can currently handle in a time when academic publishers are going through their own slow reckoning, universities are struggling to justify enrollment numbers, and entire humanities departments are being quietly defunded. September is when classes begin. All of the seats have already been taken. For those who are still catching up, the David Gauntlett Card Series is based on a body of work that…

When a lecturer uses a word that a first-generation student has never heard and the legacy student across the table nods as if it were nothing, there’s a certain quiet in a college seminar room. I’ve seen it. A slight stiffening of the shoulders, a look down at the notepad, and a silent choice not to ask are all tiny and nearly undetectable. The experience is the same whether the term is “hegemony,” “habitus,” “intersectionality,” or simply “epistemic.” Everyone else in the room seems to know a vocabulary that you missed, and while it’s not your fault, the difference is…

Every time I consider the irony that permeates this entire issue, I can’t help but smile. The most popular card in every deck is, by far, the theory card that is most difficult to fit on a four-by-six sheet of cardstock. The white whale of sociology trading cards is Jacques Derrida, the philosopher whose entire career was an argument against tidy summaries, set meanings, and the very kind of tidy compression a stat card represents. Pupils are constantly requesting him. The cards continue to sell out. The most well-liked memento of his ideas is the item he most cautioned against.…