Tag: history

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The Cost of War in Rick Remender and Daniel Acuña’s “Escape” #1

I toy with a various different writing assignments in my composition courses, typically crafting assignments based on our readings. Last spring I had students construct zines since we read riot grrrl memoirs. I’ve had students create their own comics, either scripts or full fledged comics. This semester, I am having students write fan letters. Since we are reading some early EC Comics, notably a collection of Weird Fantasy and a … Read More The Cost of War in Rick Remender and Daniel Acuña’s “Escape” #1

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Beauty Amongst Violence in “The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in The Warsaw Ghetto”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve read Hans Massaquoi’s Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany and Mary Berg’s diary that she wrote during World War II, specifically living and growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto before her family’s escape to the United States in March 1944. Massaquoi’s memoir didn’t appear until 1999, and he wrote it looking backwards, after individuals suggested he document his … Read More Beauty Amongst Violence in “The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in The Warsaw Ghetto”

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“This is an us problem!”: We Must Recognize Ourselves to Move Forward

Last week, during Donald Trump’s Joint Address to Congress, I noticed, for the first time, the fasces on each side of the podium. The fasces is an ancient symbol dating back to he Etruscans and Rome. Fasces consists of a bound bundle of rods and an axe. You can find fasces, just like swastikas, in various places. When walking around Washington D.C., you can … Read More “This is an us problem!”: We Must Recognize Ourselves to Move Forward

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You Can Never be Apolitical

In Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, Nora Krug traces her family’s history and digs deep into the role her family members played during World War II, specifically asking if they were active participants in the violence that the Nazis enacted on others. She grapples with her uncle Frank-Karl’s involvement and the ideologies he imbibed from a young age, as part of the … Read More You Can Never be Apolitical

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We Must Transform the World!

In “The White Christian and His Conscience,” Lillian Smith breaks down the ways that religion, specifically Christianity, works to maintain power and how it causes individuals to lose their conscience, causing them to live, ostensibly, with the warring teachings of Jesus and the white supremacist society they exist within. Smith, also, presents readers with analogies between Southern white Christians and Nazi Germany, at one … Read More We Must Transform the World!