by Mindy Clegg  New York Times op-ed columnist Charles Blow continues to make the rounds with his new book, The Devil You Know. In it he advocates for a reversal of the Great Migration, when Black Americans fled Jim Crow violence and sought economic opportunity in Northern and Western cities during the first half of…

by Mindy Clegg Actor Ryan Reynolds recently directed two commercials for the dating website Match.com that summed up this year for many. A bored Satan in Hell gets an alert on his phone. His eyes widen and soon he’s meeting a young woman under a park bridge—who insists he calls her twenty-twenty. It’s a love…

by Mindy Clegg Rarely do presidential elections seem so consequential, but 2020 has us all in agreement that voting is critical this year. Many simply yearn for a return to “the normal” of the Obama era or the Clinton years. Is the normal of the 90s and 2000s far enough to really address our various…

by Mindy Clegg In the third Indiana Jones film, The Last Crusade (the one with Sean Connery), the adventurous archaeologist must race to find the Holy Grail, the cup Christ drank from at the last supper which was used to catch his blood during the crucifixion. According to Authurian legend, who ever shall drink from…

by Mindy Clegg In our modern society, we are awash in a near constant barrage of information. It can be difficult for even the most critically-minded among us to sift through all of that information and vet it for truthfulness. It’s likely that we all are subject to some misinformation that we believe in the…

by Mindy Clegg The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot…

by Mindy Clegg As many of us head into our second month of shelter in place orders (or not in some cases), we are looking to the past for guidance on what comes next. Unsurprisingly, many wonder when does “normal” return. It’s a hopeful question, as after all, this is hardly the first devastating disease…

by Mindy Clegg The taste for the end times as a dramatic backdrop well preceded our current pandemic lock-down, but now seems as good a time as any to explore the popularity of end-of-time dramas as any other. Perhaps we can take some solace from a discussion of others surviving worse situations than our own,…

by Mindy Clegg For many historians beginning their journey through graduate school, one question arises over others to prompt many sleepness nights: so what? We, as individual scholars, hope to formulate a unique choice of topics. But at times an advisor or the department might push you into a more mainstream and marketable topic, that…

by Mindy Clegg The Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame recently announced this year’s inductees; the Doobie Brothers, T. Rex, Nine Inch Nails, the Notorious B.I.G, Depeche Mode, and Whitney Houston, with the Ahmet Ertegun Award (for members of the industry who are not the talent) going to Jon Landau and Irving Azoff. Not too long after,…

by Mindy Clegg This past week has been a roller coaster in American foreign policy, as we quite nearly ended up in a hot war with Iran. A curious phenomenon reared its ugly head during the fallout of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top generals—comparisons to the start of the First World…

by Mindy Clegg In issue 85 of The Big Takeover, regular contributor Tim Sommer declared in his editorial that we continue to get punk wrong. Rather than a singular historical event, split between NYC and London, he argued for two different events with a shared name happening in each place.1 He advocates for something like…

by Mindy Clegg Welcome to the future, which is now the past. As James Gleick argued (in his thoughtful and entertaining book, Time Travel: A History) the concept of the future is now fodder for historical understanding. As Gleick notes in his book, popular culture provides a key insight into how ideas about the future…

by Mindy Clegg In 1994, Miramax Pictures released a small, independently made film by an unknown director from New Jersey named Kevin Smith. Made for a mere $27,000 (maxing out credit cards and the proceeds from selling his comic collection), the black and white film—replete with deeply offensive language, references to drug dealing and usage,…

by Mindy Clegg In recent years, social and political conflicts over fandom emerged into general public consciousness. Both Captain Marvel and the upcoming film Joker illustrate the point. Both films stirred contentious debates around gender this past year.1 But many who are either new to fandom or count themselves as casual fans might miss that these…

by Mindy Clegg Forty years ago, a band from Manchester recorded and released their first full length album. It arrived after a year or so of gigs, an EP, and several tracks on a sampler LP put out by their new (and newly created) label, Factory Records. Thanks to producer Martin Hannett, it sounded unlike…

by Mindy Clegg Public discussions of generations lately most often only focus on two generations–the boomers (1946-1965?) and millennials (1985-2000?). Yet many in our culture do not identify with either. One such group, Gen X, represents a midpoint between the two. And it’s a cohort that exerts more cultural influence than is generally understood.1 Once dubbed…