Mindy Clegg holds a phd in modern US and world history from Georgia State University. Her most recent book is Punk Rock: Music is the Currency of Life which comes in August 2022 from Suny Press. Her research focus includes the history of subcultures at home and abroad during the late Cold War period. Her dissertation “Music for the International Masses” brought to light the role the American state played in shaping the global market place for popular music and how that helped facilitate a global, translocal punk movement. Clegg occasionally writes on matters historical and pop cultural at the blog Tropics of Meta. Her work can also be found in the e-book New Worlds, Terrifying Monsters, Impossible Things: Exploring the Contents and Contexts of Doctor Who published by Pop Matters and in The 100 Greatest Bands of All Time published by Greenwood. She currently serves as a part time instructor in US and World history at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta, GA. Email: mindy.clegg [at] gmail.com
by Mindy Clegg In 2015, Slovenian industrial band Laibach released Spectre. Known for their cover songs, their eighth studio album consisted primarily of originals. One track, “Eurovision”, posits that after years of building up a pan-European organization, disaster looms for this decades long project. The song—released prior to Brexit—seems a warning, similar to their 1989…
by Mindy Clegg It’s the beginning of fall and the Halloween season! As we’re still somewhat locked down (though we should be MORE locked down, if you ask me), why not a recommendation for a horror film that addresses some aspect of modern history? In this case, the Bosnian War. Humans have long loved to…
by Mindy Clegg Today punk is a relatively celebrated subculture. Amy Poehler recently directed Moxie, a film about teen girls influenced by the punk riot girl movement of the 1990s, using zines (a self-published magazine popular in punk circles) to combat misogyny at their school. The film includes an appearance from the Linda Lindas, an…
by Mindy Clegg Just a note that some might find the material in my post this month upsetting and triggering, as it deals with forms of abuse. In 2012, Ashley Diamond, convicted of burglary after her then boyfriend convinced her to pawn a stolen saw, arrived in the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections…
by Mindy Clegg By now over 100,000,000 Americans have received the Covid-19 vaccine and we seem on track to double that by the end of President Biden’s hundredth day. Efforts to reach herd immunity continue apace with many states opening up access to more groups in recent weeks. It’s a hopeful feeling, seeing more people…
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…