Author: Melissa Bridwell

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…

In a classroom where students are physically present but mentally distant, a certain kind of frustration develops. Twenty or so teenagers stare blankly while a teacher stands at the front, going through slides on Foucault or Freud. This isn’t because the students are stupid; rather, it’s because the information hasn’t been presented to them in a way that they can understand. As it happens, that shape could be a trading card. In American high school classrooms, theory trading cards—small, portable cards that condense academic thinkers, their main ideas, and their intellectual conflicts into a manageable format—have been subtly introduced. The…

When you visit some adult education centers around the nation, you may notice something unexpected on the desks: little laminated cards with names like Foucault, Chomsky, or Habermas printed on them. These cards resemble sports collectibles. They are being exchanged between hands, shuffled, and discussed. These aren’t kids having fun. These adult immigrants are learning to think critically about the information world they’ve entered, and many of them are navigating the U.S. legal system. The combination of media theory and immigration education may seem strange. However, teachers who have implemented David Gauntlett’s Theory Trading Cards in their classrooms report that…

One particular moment keeps coming back. A 1952 Mickey Mantle card in perfect condition sells for $12.6 million at a Sunday night auction in August 2022, the highest price ever paid for a piece of sports memorabilia. And most financial advisors in America just shrugged. It’s likely that some people were unaware. That could have been a mistake that should have been rethought. For the better part of ten years, the trading card market has been discreetly creating something that, when viewed from certain perspectives, resembles a legitimate asset class. Not a passing trend. It’s not just sentimentality disguised as…

Imagine a British classroom in the year 2002. Not Pokémon or Top Trumps, but trading cards with Stuart Hall, Bell Hooks, and Laura Mulvey staring back at sixteen-year-olds who had never heard of any of those names before, are dropped onto a desk by a media studies teacher. That is the peculiar, humble, and strangely clever beginnings of David Gauntlett’s Theory Cards, a teaching tool that has been subtly influencing young people’s perspectives on gender, identity, and representation for more than 20 years. In the years 2000 and 2001, Gauntlett, a British media scholar, launched theorycards.org.uk. Those who are familiar…

Something a little out of the ordinary has been going on in a suburban Ohio classroom that appears unremarkable from the hallway and has motivational posters that no one reads anymore. A stack of cards is produced by a teacher. They all have names, theories, and schools of thought. Dewey, John. Paulo Freire. Bloom, Benjamin. She raises one. A pupil narrows their eyes. guesses incorrectly. When something truly surprises them, the class laughs—not in a cruel way. After that, they debate the solution for four minutes in a row. As it happens, the test results are appalling. However, no one…