Author: TheConversation

By Sarah Burns, Associate Professor of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology Allegations are flying left and right about potential, or actual, efforts to unfairly and secretly influence the outcome of the 2020 election. It is a time when political scientists and constitutional scholars like to look back on other times when the electoral process was, you might say, helped along by practices that either were or appeared to be underhanded. There are not many examples of so-called “stolen elections” in U.S. history, but the ones that had irregularities and were controversial, in 1824 and 2000, had an oversized...

By Anthony Dukes, Professor of Marketing, University of Southern California; and Yi Zhu, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Minnesota Some of the most hated companies in the U.S. are also the most profitable. Much of this consumer resentment may stem from poor customer service. In fact, most Americans have fought with phone menus, desperately seeking a live service agent to seek a refund. In 2013, Americans spent an average of 13 hours disputing a purchase or resolving a problem with customer service. As professors of marketing, we have examined why customer service continues to be so unsatisfactory even...

By Rob Ruck, Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh During the half century that baseball was divided by a color line, black America created a sporting world of its own. Black teams played on city sandlots and country fields, with the best barnstorming their way across the country and throughout the Caribbean. A century ago, on February 13, 1920, teams from eight cities formally created the Negro National League. Three decades of stellar play followed, as the league affirmed black competence and grace on the field, while forging a collective identity that brought together Northern-born blacks and their Southern...

By Michael C. Weisenburg, Reference & Instruction Librarian at Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, University of South Carolina Before World War II, superheroes were all the rage. Reflecting anxieties over the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and the march to war, readers yearned for mythical figures who would defend the disenfranchised and uphold liberal democratic ideals. Once the war ended, the content of comic books started to change. Superheroes gradually fell out of fashion and a proliferation of genres emerged. Some, such as Westerns, offered readers a nostalgic fantasy of a pre-industrial America. Others, like...

By Christine Larson, Assistant Professor of Journalism, University of Colorado Boulder In an early chapter of “American Dirt,” the much-hyped novel now at the center of a racial controversy, the protagonist, Lydia, fills her Acapulco, Mexico, bookstore with her favorite literary classics. Because these don’t sell very well, she also stocks all “the splashy bestsellers that made her shop profitable.” Ironically, it’s this lopsided business model that has, in part, fueled the backlash to the book. In the book, Lydia’s favorite customer, a would-be poet turned ruthless drug lord, orders the massacre of Lydia’s entire family after her journalist...

By Christine Larson, Assistant Professor of Journalism, University of Colorado Boulder Over the past month, Romance Writers of America, one of the country’s largest writing associations, with over 9,000 members, has erupted in a race-related scandal. The controversy began when diversity activist and romance writer Courtney Milan, in a pointed tweet, criticized racial stereotypes that appeared in a book by a fellow member. Writers took sides. A punishment was handed down. Backlash ensued. Now the very existence of the 40-year-old organization is in doubt. But you’d never know it from the cheeky media coverage, which hasn’t been able to...