Author: Melissa Bridwell

The fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote for years in near obscurity before emerging as the theoretical cornerstone of feminist sociology courses is subtly telling. Not in a footnote. Not out of historical interest. as a base. Today, if you walk into a mid-level gender studies classroom and take out the theory cards that are stacked next to the syllabus, there’s a good chance Gilman’s name will be near the top of the pile, underlined, dog-eared, and passed around. She was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, in a household that molded its members more by their mistakes than by…

Like so many odd things, it began with a joke that got out of control. Karl Marx was featured on a mock trading card that was posted on r/Sociology. It was designed like a Pokémon card, complete with stats, abilities, and flavor text. What was his weakness? His “attack move” was described as “Historical Materialism: deals 80 damage to capitalist structures.” empirical information. Within hours, the post received tens of thousands of upvotes, and all of a sudden, no one was discussing anything else on that section of Reddit. The internet seems to have been silently anticipating something similar. For…

You might notice something strange on the desks if you walk into a public school media classroom on a Tuesday afternoon somewhere like Evanston, Illinois, or outside Portland, Oregon. There are no laptops with YouTube open. There are no face-up phones awaiting a notification. Rather, there are cards that are laminated, printed, and distributed with an almost antiquated sense of purpose. Teachers use what they refer to as “theory cards,” which are loosely based on the theories of British media scholar David Gauntlett, to pose questions that most teenagers have never thought of: Who created this content? Why? What does…

It was never intended for Harry Edwards to be taken seriously. In any case, not by the academic establishment. Many sociologists considered it, at best, a curiosity that sports—sweaty, commercial, spectacular sports—could reveal something significant about race, power, and the structure of American life. An embarrassment, at worst. Edwards has undoubtedly prevailed in that debate decades later, as he sits in front of a camera at San José State University to record what he refers to as his “Last Lectures.” And now, at eighty-three, he’s creating a new one: that what he created in lecture halls ought to be found…

In sociology seminars all over the world, a game is played, almost imperceptibly. A theory is presented by someone. It is contested by someone else. De Beauvoir is pulled out by someone. The room suddenly changes. It has occurred in cramped postgraduate offices in Manchester, bright lecture halls in Nairobi, and packed seminar rooms in Lahore where the whiteboard markers are constantly dry and ceiling fans sway overhead. Simone de Beauvoir appears everywhere, and she nearly always prevails. When you spend time with people who work as social scientists, it’s difficult to ignore this. Other theoretical references just don’t have…

A tiny laminated theory card that is tucked into the back of a course pack, almost like an afterthought, is making the rounds in university semiotics and media studies classes. It features a quotation from Roland Barthes, a French philosopher and literary critic who devoted much of his career to doing what most scholars shied away from: examining commonplace objects and posing difficult questions about them. wine. vehicles. Steak. soap. the items of daily existence. Nevertheless, what he discovered within those commonplace items proved to be more illuminating than anything found in boardrooms or lecture halls. Building on a series…

A certain type of product finds its audience through something more akin to word-of-mouth and mild disbelief than through marketing campaigns or shelf placement. That includes Theory Trading Cards, which are tiny, illustrated collectibles with the faces and concepts of influential academics. At first glance, they appear to be a joke created by a graduate student. After picking one up and reading the back, you come to the conclusion that it might be the most helpful thing you’ve come across this semester. The cards were made in 2001 by British media and communications professor David Gauntlett, who seems to have…

Every classroom has a moment when you can sense that collective, quiet drift. glaze in the eyes. Pens come to a stop. Despite its importance, the material isn’t landing. Every teacher who has ever stood in front of a class is familiar with that moment. What to do about it is less certain. A deck of cards, an almost embarrassingly basic solution, has been appearing on the desks of more and more instructors. The 21-Card Gauntlett Deck isn’t very eye-catching. Neither a dashboard nor a subscription fee are included. However, it provides something that most curricula subtly fail to provide…

Most Thursday afternoons, a loose group of four or five people spread out a deck of cards at a specific table at a coffee shop on Franklin Avenue in Bed-Stuy and begin arguing. Not with regard to poker hands. About media identity, David Gauntlett, and whether Instagram has actually altered young men’s perceptions of masculinity. The cards are printed with theoretical frameworks that most people only come across in a $300 university textbook, laminated, and color-coded. This is the Gauntlett Theory Card Deck, and for some reason, café culture in Brooklyn has welcomed it much more than lecture halls, where…

Nowadays, there’s a good chance that Patricia Hill Collins is on the reading list at practically every graduate sociology seminar. Not as background information. as the base. Although Collins herself frequently has, that change did not occur overnight or in a quiet manner. The fact that the woman who wrote about being “virtually silenced” in her youth is now at the center of some of the most heated debates in American higher education is quietly remarkable. Collins was born in a working-class Black neighborhood in Philadelphia in 1948. Growing up, Collins witnessed her mother, who had intended to become an…