For fifty years, American opinion on abortion barely moved.  Then the Dobbs decision happened. 

Posted on May 6, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Laurel Elder, Steven Greene, and Mary-Kate Lizotte, coauthors of Not Going Back: Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Dobbs America, explain how and why public opinion has shifted since the Dobbs decision. 

June 2026 marks four years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion access. This anniversary provides an important opportunity to assess how public opinion has evolved in the wake of this seismic shift.

We have spent our careers researching gender and public opinion, from the gender gap, to the politics of parenthood, to views on candidate spouses. It was a natural extension of our work to examine abortion, one of the most visible and consequential gender-related issues in American politics.

Our research on abortion attitudes began well before Dobbs. What initially drew our attention was the remarkable stability of public opinion on the issue. While political debates often framed the issue as a stark divide between “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” most Americans held more nuanced, situational views, supporting legal access to abortion in some circumstances but not others. Despite high-profile political battles and public debate, aggregate public opinion on abortion remained strikingly stable for nearly half a century.

Dobbs disrupted that equilibrium. In Not Going Back we examine how and why public opinion has shifted and how American politics has been changed as a result.

As policy moved sharply to the right in the wake of Dobbs, with more than a dozen states enacting near-total abortion bans and others enacting strict limitations, public opinion moved in the opposite direction. More Americans now identify as pro-choice and support legal access to abortion under all circumstances. The result is a growing disconnect between law and public sentiment, one that is reshaping the political landscape.

One of our most notable findings is the emergence of a gender gap in abortion attitudes. Contrary to common assumptions, men and women held very similar views on abortion for decades. After Dobbs, however, women have become significantly more supportive of abortion rights than men.

This shift is driven in part by personal experience and exposure. Individuals who know someone who has struggled to access abortion care, who worry about losing access themselves, or who have a deeper understanding of reproductive health are more likely to support abortion rights. In the post-Dobbs environment, exposure to these realities has increased, especially among women.

We also find a notable reversal in issue prioritization. For decades, Republicans and those identifying as pro-life were more likely to rank abortion as a top political issue. After Dobbs, that dynamic flipped. The energy and urgency now lie with those who support expanded access to abortion.

This shift reflects, in part, divisions within the Republican coalition. While Democratic voters are largely aligned with their party’s pro-choice stance, Republicans are more internally divided. Roughly one-third of Republicans identify as pro-choice, creating a sizable group of cross-pressured voters. Our research shows that such cross-pressures are associated with lower voter turnout in the post-Dobbs era, posing an ongoing challenge for the GOP.

Our findings also highlight a key political reality: there is no widely accepted “moderate” abortion ban. In survey experiments, Americans did not view a 12-week ban as meaningfully more acceptable than a 6-week ban. In the post-Dobbs context, a ban is a ban, and bans are broadly unpopular. This creates a difficult strategic landscape for Republican candidates seeking to find more moderate positions on abortion.

The phrase that became our title—Not Going Back—emerged from the data. The forces reshaping public opinion, from policy change to increased personal exposure, are not temporary. As a result, public opinion is unlikely to return to its pre-Dobbs equilibrium. This new landscape will shape how candidates campaign, who wins elections, and how they govern. In short, Dobbs did not simply change policy; it set in motion a lasting transformation in American public opinion and politics.

We invite you to explore these findings in our new book.

Filed under: american studies, civil rights, Education, ethics, gender studies, health, History, law & criminology, Mass Media and Communications, political science, sexuality, sociology, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Time to Remember French AIDS Activism

Posted on April 29, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we repost the February 12, 2020 blog entry by Christophe Broqua, author of Action = Vie, about Act Up-Paris.

Since the end of 2018, large-scale mobilizations in France by activist groups have challenged the authorities and demanded more social justice. The “Yellow Vest” movement holds demonstrations every Saturday in Paris. Among the streets that they have regularly occupied—sometimes without providing advance notice to the Prefecture (as prescribed by French law)—is the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées, which stretches from Place de la Concorde to Place de l’Étoile, where the Arc de Triomphe is located, an area largely inaccessible for street demonstrations.

Action=Vie_SM

Twenty-five years earlier, on December 1, 1993, the AIDS organization Act Up-Paris braved the difficulty of demonstrating in this same area by placing a giant condom on the Obélisque de la Concorde. They also blocked the top of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées on December 1, 1994, an action illustrated by the photo on the cover of Action = Vie: A History of AIDS Activism and Gay Politics in France. At the time, Act Up-Paris was considered one of the major social movements in France. The organization met with considerable success in terms of mobilization as well as media coverage and political impact—contrary to the predictions of failure that it had initially inspired.

Indeed, when Act Up-Paris was formed in 1989, the vast majority of local commentators thought the organization, based on the American model, could not succeed. They reproached it for being a lame copy, unsuited to the French context. That it was linked to the gay and lesbian community undoubtedly added to mistrust and discrediting of the organization. The success of Act-Up-Paris, however, continues the long French protest tradition—it reached its peak in the mid 1990s. The criticism was indicative of the tense relationship between the French and the United States, rather than of the relevance (or not) of political activism in the face of the epidemic in France. Indeed, France is dominated by an ideology that claims to reject “communitarianism” in favor of “republican universalism,” but which, in reality, fears political organization of oppressed or stigmatized minorities more than anything.

Nevertheless, the success of Act Up-Paris had some limitations, particularly when new treatments led to a drop in HIV/AIDS-related mortality, at least in the Global North. Little by little, without ever disappearing, the organization got smaller, while the other dominant AIDS organization in France, AIDES—inspired by the Gay MHC (New York) and the Terrence Higgins Trust (London)—succeeded due to their commitment to helping individuals. In contrast, Act Up defined its actions as strictly political. In the 1990s, Act Up-Paris had become a major player in the AIDS fight and gay rights movements, but lost its media visibility in the following decade and was virtually unknown to new generations.

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This progressive erasure and oblivion slowed in 2017 with the release of the film, BPM (Beats Per Minute). Directed and co-written by Robin Campillo a former member of Act Up-Paris, the film retraced the first years of the organization in a fictional but very realistic way. It also included a tragic love story between two activists, Nathan (Arnaud Valois) and Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart). Debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, the film won the prestigious Jury Grand Prize. From the outset, critics were ecstatic in their support of the film and the emotions it stirred. When it was released in cinemas, it was a huge success; in just a few months more than 800,000 tickets were sold. This tremendous response to a past that was largely forgotten, especially among the new generation, was impressive. For younger viewers, it was the discovery of a heroic past that many people did not know about; for older viewers, the film stirred memories of difficult times or the feeling of having missed out on history.

Overall, the film enabled society to indulge in a kind of collective redemption in the face of what it had not wanted to see—i.e., an epidemic affecting stigmatized minorities who used forms of political action to survive. Far from being an isolated phenomenon, the movie success was part of a larger remembrance process affecting both the history of the fight against AIDS as well as the mobilization of sexual and gender minorities in various European and North American countries.

Alas, this rediscovery of Act Up-Paris was focused mainly in France, as the film BPM did not enjoy the same commercial success in the United States, though it fared well critically.

French history is strongly connected to American history: the founder and several important activists of Act Up-Paris went through Act Up New York, which also represented an important model for the French group. Later, Act Up-Paris became the largest Act Up group in the world.

Now that time has passed, will its history finally be discovered beyond the French borders?

Filed under: Anthropology, cultural studies, Education, gender studies, health, History, LGBT studies, Mass Media and Communications, political science, sexuality, sociology, transnational politics, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Celebrating Independent Bookstore Day!

Posted on April 22, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we honor the independent bookstores that support Temple University Press. Please visit them on April 25 for Independent Bookstore Day!

Celia Bookshop, 102 Park Avenue in Swarthmore, PA, will host Remission Quest author Virginia Adams O’Connell on Saturday, April 25 from 4:00 to 5:00 pm as part of their Independent Bookstore Day celebration.

Harriet’s Bookshop, 258 East Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, PA, celebrates women authors, women artists, and women activists. While you’re there, grab a copy of Lynn Matluck Brooks’ Theatres of the Body.

Inkwood Books, 108 Kings Highway East in Haddonfield, NJ, a charming indie bookstore specializing in regional nonfiction, contemporary literature, and romance. Pick up Ray Didinger’s The Eagles Encyclopedia: Champions II.

booked. 8511 Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia, PA. Surround yourself with books at this cozy store that promotes the joy of reading. Treat yourself to The Battles of Germantown, by David Young.

Headhouse Books, 619 South 2nd Street, in Philadelphia, PA, was founded in 2005 on the belief that no community is complete without the inspiration and exchange of ideas that only a locally owned, independent bookstore can provide. Shop there for Jim Murphy’s Real Philly History, Real Fast.

Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South Street in Philadelphia, PA, is an all-volunteer collectively run anarchist bookstore “functioning within a system we oppose.” Support the store by purchasing a copy of Kate Eichhorns’ The Archival Turn in Feminism.

Narberth Bookstore, 221 Haverford Avenue in Narberth, PA, is designed for a community of readers, writers, and lifelong learners. Check out a copy of A Century of Music Under the Stars, by Jack McCarthy at checkout.

Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books, 5445 Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia, PA, offers Cool People, Dope Books, Great Coffee. Swing by to get Amy Jane Cohen’s Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape.

Main Point Books, 116 North Wayne Avenue in Wayne, PA, because every town deserves its own indie bookstore. Stop by and buy Anndee Hochman’s Parent Trip.

Open Bookstore, 7900 High School Road in Elkins Park, PA, is your friendly neighborhood indie bookstore in the Philly burbs. Drop in and order a copy of Monument Lab: Re:Generation, edited by Paul Farber and Sue Mobley.

The Doylestown Bookshop, 16 South Main Street in Doylestown, PA, is a locally owned and operated bookstore dedicated to preserving the heritage and traditions of independent bookstore ideals. Pick up Rebecca Yamin’s Digging in the City of Brotherly Love.

Giovanni’s Room, 345 South 12 Street in Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia’s historic queer and LGBTQ+ bookstore. Shop titles and genres of LGBTQ+ online and in-store. Browse the shelves for a copy of The City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, by Marc Stein.

A Novel Idea on Passyunk, 1726 East Passyunk Avenue in Philadelphia, PA, fosters a better Philadelphia community with their small bookstore. Meet the staff and request a copy of Salut!, by Lynn Miller and Therese Dolan.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, art, cultural studies, Education, gender studies, History, Labor Studies, law & criminology, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, Music, Philadelphia, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Looking back on organized taxpayer activity in the 1930s

Posted on April 15, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, in honor of Tax Day, we repost this entry from Linda Upham-Bornstein, author of “Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender”, about what she unexpectedly discovered about the taxpayers’ associations during the Great Depression.

“Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender” is, at least in part, the product of serendipity. About 25 years ago, my husband and I were reorganizing the basement of his law office in New Hampshire when I happened upon a box containing bound copies of the Coos Guardian from 1934, of which Arthur J. Bergeron, the firm’s retired senior partner, was the editor. This weekly newspaper provided contemporaneous accounts of the efforts of Arthur and the newly formed local taxpayers’ association to effectuate economic and political change in the community, region, and state. This story spurred me to investigate whether this manifestation of organized taxpayer activity was unique to northern New Hampshire or part of a broader movement during the Great Depression. In the ensuing years I identified a plethora of rich, untapped primary sources that documented the emergence of a nationwide taxpayers’ association movement in the 1930s.

A number of my findings surprised me. Among the most prominent are the magnitude of the tax revolt and the speed with which taxpayers’ groups multiplied; the attitudes of organized taxpayers toward the size and reach of government; and the distinctive form of collective tax resistance that emerged in the Reconstruction South.

The proliferation of taxpayers’ leagues in the early 1930s was remarkable. In 1928, they probably numbered fifty or so. As the domestic economy contracted, a good government professional observed in 1932, “an irresistible demand that the cost of local government be reduced” swept “across the country like a prairie fire.” By 1933 there were over four thousand taxpayers’ organizations nationwide.

The attitudes of tax resisters toward the role and reach of government in general, and toward the New Deal in particular, were also unexpected. Because much of modern tax resistance is grounded in the world view, articulated by Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address, that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem,” I anticipated that Depression-era tax revolters would exhibit intense antistatism. Although some organized taxpayers sought to shrink and shackle government, most did not want smaller, more limited government but rather government that was more efficient, more effective, more progressive, and able to provide necessary services in a cost-effective manner. Nearly all taxpayers wanted the price of government to undergo the same measure of deflation as the economy, but they also wanted to maintain the government services they needed and used. What most organized taxpayers desired was less expensive state and local government so as to reduce their state and local tax burdens.

The views of organized taxpayers toward the New Deal were a complicated and sometimes incongruous mix. The feelings of most members of taxpayers’ associations about the New Deal ranged from outright support to ambivalence. Two factors account for the overall lack of opposition to the New Deal from citizens who were protesting vigorously their state and local taxes.

First and foremost, New Deal programs were conferring direct, concrete benefits on many of these taxpayers, especially the housing, agricultural, and relief initiatives. Consequently, many members of taxpayers’ groups understandably welcomed—and some expected—the federal government’s intervention in the domestic economy. Even taxpayers with an individualistic, antistatist mindset tended to have mixed feelings about the New Deal, harboring suspicions of big government but recognizing their need for assistance from the Roosevelt administration and grudgingly accepting it.

Second, the New Deal tax regime did not produce significant tax awareness among or tax resistance from the middle classes because it eschewed taxing the income of the middle classes and instead relied mainly on taxes on the wealthy and corporations, on indirect or hidden consumer taxes, and on taxes (like social security payroll taxes) that taxpayers did not think of as taxes. By and large, taxpayers who participated in collective tax resistance at the local and state levels did not perceive New Deal spending to be adding to their tax burdens.

In my investigation of the 19th-century origins and antecedents of Depression-era taxpayers’ associations, I was struck by how different collective tax resistance in the Reconstruction South was from organized taxpayer activity elsewhere. Outside the former confederate states, the overarching goal of nearly all taxpayers’ associations in this era was to reduce taxes, though in many cases taxpayers also had a genuine interest in promoting the public’s interest in good and efficient government. In the Reconstruction South, however, tax resistance under the guise of good citizenship was merely the means to other, ulterior ends. Taxpayers in the South used collective tax resistance in an effort to weaken government authority, “redeem” state governments from Republican control, reestablish the institutions of white supremacy, and nullify in practice (if not as a matter of law) the post-Civil War amendments to the United States Constitution. Taxpayers’ groups in the South also diverged from those in the North in their methods, including extrajudicial violence, which was absent from tax protests outside the former Confederacy.

Finally, tax resistance in the South was untethered to the evolving notions of civic responsibility and good citizenship that broadly animated Northern tax resistance. Most taxpayers’ groups outside the South were interested in, and worked for, better and more efficient government. Southern taxpayers’ leagues wanted the opposite: government that was worse, small, and ineffectual. The Redeemers were highly successful in their quest for low taxes, low spending, and weak state governments after 1877. In Mississippi, for example, between 1875 and 1885, Democrats cut the state budget by more than half and slashed taxes. The connections between organized tax resistance in the South and the commitment to good citizenship, better government, and the rule of law that most Northern taxpayers’ organizations evidenced was attenuated at best and often absent altogether.

Historians strive to be objective, but they often approach the subjects of their research with certain preconceptions. My investigation of organized taxpayer activity in the 1930s reminded me of the importance of keeping an open mind, expecting to find the unexpected, and adapting one’s historical analysis accordingly.

Filed under: american studies, economics/business, ethics, History, Labor Studies, law & criminology, political science, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Play Ball!

Posted on April 8, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase our books about baseball to celebrate the start of the season.

Work, Fight, or Play Ball: How Bethlehem Steel Helped Baseball’s Stars Avoid World War I, by William Ecenbarger

In 1918, Bethlehem Steel started the world’s greatest industrial baseball league. Appealing to Major League Baseball players looking to avoid service in the Great War, teams employed “ringers” like Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, and Shoeless Joe Jackson in what became scornfully known as “safe shelter” leagues. In Work, Fight, or Play Ball, William Ecenbarger fondly recounts this little-known story of how dozens of athletes faced professional conflicts and a difficult choice in light of public perceptions and war propaganda. Ecenbarger traces the 1918 Steel League’s season and compares the fates of the players who defected to industry or continued to play stateside with the travails of the Major Leaguers, such as Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, and Grover Cleveland Alexander, who served during the war.

Dominican Baseball: New Pride, Old Prejudice by Alan Klein

Outstanding Book Award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, 2015

In his incisive and engaging book, Dominican Baseball, Alan Klein examines the history of MLB’s presence and influence in the Dominican Republic, the development of the booming industry and academies, and the dependence on Dominican player developers, known as buscones. He also addresses issues of identity fraud and the use of performance-enhancing drugs as hopefuls seek to play professionally. Dominican Baseball charts the trajectory of the economic flows of this transnational exchange, and the pride Dominicans feel in their growing influence in the sport. Klein also uncovers the prejudice that prompts MLB to diminish Dominican claims on legitimacy. This sharp, smartly argued book deftly chronicles the uneasy and often contested relations of the contemporary Dominican game and industry.

Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball by Lincoln A. Mitchell

Major League Baseball is a beloved American institution that has been a product of the economic, social, and media structures that have evolved in the United States over the last century. In his shrewd analysis, Will Big League Baseball Survive?, Lincoln Mitchell asks whether the sport will continue in its current form as a huge, lucrative global business that offers a monopoly in North America—and whether those structures are sustainable. Mitchell places baseball in the context of the larger, evolving American and global entertainment sector. He examines how both changes directly related to baseball—including youth sports and the increased globalization of the game—as well as broader societal trends such as developments in media consumption and celebrity culture will impact big league baseball over the next few decades.

Biz Mackey, a Giant behind the Plate: The Story of the Negro League Star and Hall of Fame Catcher, by Rich Westcott

National Baseball Hall of Fame catcher James Raleigh “Biz” Mackey’s professional career spanned nearly three decades in the Negro Leagues and elsewhere. He distinguished himself as a defensive catcher who also had an impressive batting average and later worked as a manager of the Newark Eagles and the Baltimore Elite Giants. Using archival materials and interviews with former Negro League players, baseball historian Rich Westcott chronicles the catcher’s life and remarkable career in Biz Mackey as well as providing an in-depth look at Philadelphia Negro League history. Mackey also mentored famed catcher Roy Campanella and had an unlikely role in the story of baseball’s development in Japan.

Suicide Squeeze: Taylor Hooton, Rob Garibaldi, and the Fight against Teenage Steroid Abuse, by William C. Kashatus

In his urgent book Suicide Squeeze, William Kashatus chronicles the experiences of Taylor Hooton and Rob Garibaldi, two promising high school baseball players who abused anabolic steroids (APEDs) in the hopes of attracting professional scouts and Division I recruiters. However, as a result of their steroid abuse, they ended up taking their own lives. In Suicide Squeeze—named for the high-risk play in baseball to steal home—Kashatus identifies the symptoms and dangers of steroid use among teens. Using archival research and interviews with the Hooton and Garibaldi families, he explores the lives and deaths of these two troubled young men, the impact of their suicides on Major League Baseball, and the ongoing fight against adolescent APED use that their parents have been waging. A passionate appeal to prevent additional senseless deaths by athletes, Suicide Squeeze makes an important contribution to debates on youth and sports and on public policy.

Rookies of the Year by Bob Bloss

Baseball players only have one opportunity to be named “Rookie of the Year” by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Although some recipients of this prestigious award such as Orlando Cepeda have become league MVPs, or Hall of Fame honorees, others, like Joe Charboneau, failed to live up to their initial promise. Rookies of the Year profiles 116 winners-from Jackie Robinson (the first Rookie of the Year in 1947), to Rod Carew, Derek Jeter, and the 2004 honorees. Each player’s initial major league season and subsequent career achievements are included. Featuring interviews with dozens of baseball stars, this is the most comprehensive book ever written on Rookies of the Year. It provides indispensable information on some of baseball’s greatest athletes.

The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant, by Robin Roberts and C. Paul Rogers

The 1950 Phillies unexpectedly captured the hearts and imaginations of Philadelphians. A young upstart team—in fact, the youngest major league baseball team ever fielded—they capped a Cinderella season by winning the pennant from the heavily favored Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field on the last day of the season. It was the first National League pennant for the team since 1915. With that dramatic victory the 1950 Phillies went into the history books, known forever as the Whiz Kids. This inspiring era in Phillies history comes alive with the personal reflections of Robin Roberts, a Hall of Famer and arguably the best right-handed pitcher in Phillies history.  Rich with anecdotes never before published from players like Hall-of-Famer Richie Ashburn, Bubba Church, Andy Seminick, Curt Simmons, Del Ennis, Dick Sisler, Russ Meyer, and many others, this book relives the success of the Whiz Kids in all their glory.

Bill Giles and Baseball, by John B. Lord

Bill Giles oversaw one of the greatest eras of winning that the Philadelphia Phillies ever enjoyed and helped guide major league baseball through the most turbulent era in its history. In Bill Giles and Baseball, John Lord deftly chronicles Giles’ remarkable career—which includes 44 years with the Phillies—to provide an insider’s view of the business of the sport. He addresses the often controversial, sometimes ill-advised, moves by baseball’s hierarchy that have nonetheless propelled the game to unimagined economic growth.

The Phillies Reader Edited by Richard Orodenker

The Phillies Reader features essays on the athletic achievements of such legendary players as Chuck Klein, Richie Ashburn, Dick Allen, and Mike Schmidt; the political turmoil surrounding the “ok” from manager Ben Chapman to “ride” Jackie Robinson about the color of his skin; the bizarre shooting of Eddie Waitkus; the heroics of the Whiz Kids; the heartbreak of ’64; and the occasional triumphs and frequent travails of controversial managers Gene Mauch, Frank Lucchesi, and Danny Ozark. It asks why fans boo great players such as Del Ennis, but forgave Pat Burrell for his horrendous 2003 slump. Featuring essays by Red Smith, Pete Dexter, Roger Angell, and James Michener, among others, The Phillies Reader presents a compendium of Phillies literature that reveals what it is that makes legends.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, cultural studies, economics/business, History, immigration, Labor Studies, Latin American studies, latinos, Philadelphia, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, sports | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Reimagining what we think we know about race, gender, sexuality, nation, diaspora, and empire

Posted on April 1, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes Thomas Xavier Sarmiento, author of The Heartland of U.S. Empire, wrotes about the queer Filipinx Midwest.

In the fall of 2010, I decided to watch an episode of Glee, a popular comedy-drama about members of a high school glee club who sing pop hits (among other genres). Incidentally, my first episode was the season two premiere, which featured a character named Sunshine Corazon, a new exchange student from the Philippines. As a queer Filipinx person, I reveled in watching a Filipina belt out lyrics to Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s sapphic anthem “Telephone.” I was already a fan of the actor playing Corazon, Jake Zyrus, because of his single “Pyramid,” recorded under the name Charice. After this episode, I wanted to see more.

As I started watching more episodes, backtracking to season one, I learned that the show was set in Ohio and the high school was named after President William McKinley. I found it ironic that a Filipina exchange student was enrolled at a high school named after the person responsible for the annexation of her country in 1898. More puzzling was her presence in the middle of the country—a place not readily associated with Filipinx America. And yet, I was also living in the Midwest, starting my third year in the American Studies Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota and being advised by a queer and trans Filipinx scholar. Nevertheless, being queer and Filipinx in the Midwest can feel like being a unicorn, a unique, beautiful, mythical creature that stands out of place.

Thus began my quest to understand the queer Filipinx presence in America’s heartland, resulting in my book, The Heartland of U.S. Empire: Race, Region, and the Queer Filipinx Midwest. I narrowed my research to literary and cultural representations, given their power to shape perception regardless of actual reality. And given the vastness of the Midwest region, such texts are more accessible. Although some of the texts I analyze feature queer identity, most would be not readily classified as LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and related identities); rather, I frame them as queer for their nonnormative orientation to both Filipinx America and the Midwest. That is, queerness names that sense of being strange and out of place. Filipinxs in the Midwest are neither part of mainstream Filipinx America, which is oriented to the West Coast, nor part of the mainstream Midwest, which is perceived as White. But as my book shows, the middle can be a productive space and place to reimagine what we think we know about race, gender, sexuality, nation, diaspora, and empire.

The book makes a case for both the Midwest as central to the story of the United States’ colonization of the Philippines (1898–1946) and Filipinx Midwesterners as reconfiguring the bounds of the U.S. Filipinx diaspora. Examples include

  • Museum exhibits in Kansas about the Spanish– and Philippine–American Wars and the Pacific front of World War II
  • Poems (Aimee Suzara’s Souvenir), an experimental film (Marlon Fuentes and Bridget Yearian’s Bontoc Eulogy), and a short story (Jesse Lee Kercheval’s “The Dogeater”) about the display of over 1,000 native Filipinxs at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair
  • Photographs and unpublished memoirs of White and Black civilian Kansans living in the Philippines during the early twentieth century
  • Filipinx handwritten student essays from 1904 housed at the University of Michigan
  • Filipinx Minnesotan student perspectives on Philippine independence during the 1920s
  • Bienvenido Santos’s literature (Scent of Apples and The Man Who (Thought He) Looked Like Robert Taylor) and memoir (Memory’s Fictions) that capture his time in the Midwest
  • Short stories about Filipinas growing up in Chicago and suburban Milwaukee during the 1970s and 1980s (M. Evelina Galang’s Her Wild American Self)
  • A play about Filipinx siblings growing up on a non-working farm in Middle America in the 1990s (A. Rey Pamatmat’s Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them)
  • Filipinx characters and actors on television shows set in the contemporary Midwest (Glee and Superstore)

What these numerous examples revealed to me, and what I hope they reveal to you, is that Filipinxs in the Midwest are not anomalies, but rather appear so because of dominant narratives about race and region. This constellation maps the queer Filipinx Midwest: a counter-narrative of America’s heartland and the U.S. Filipinx diaspora that places queerness, Filipinxs, and the Midwest in dialogue with one another.

The Heartland of U.S. Empire invites you to dive into the middle and to see that “flyover country” is not as bland as you might think.

Filed under: american studies, asian american studies, Asian Studies, civil rights, cultural studies, Disability Studies, drama, Education, environment, gender studies, History, immigration, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, Religion, sexuality, sociology, transnational politics, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Door That Was Never Closed

Posted on March 25, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Michael E. Sawyer, author of The Door of N̶o̶ Return, writes about “Being-as-Black.”

As I live with this book, I realize that I am still learning from it.

That starts with the title. The “No” in The Door of N̶o̶ Return is stricken through. Not erased, but crossed out, remaining visible. This turns out to matter enormously, because a stricken “No” has no phonetic form. You cannot say it. If you treat it as simply deleted, you get “The Door of Return,” which misses the point entirely. If you try to say “the No-stricken-but-still-there Return,” you’ve demonstrated only how badly language can fail. The title is, strictly speaking, unsayable.

After reading and re-reading this book, I realized that the sonic version of the title, its spoken form, had been there the whole time. I just hadn’t heard it. In the text, in thinking about the discourse of Love under conditions of subjective instability, I linger with August Wilson’s Fences. I’ve always been preoccupied with the scene where the son, Cory, asks his father, Troy, “How come you ain’t never liked me?” Read strictly, the double negative, “ain’t never” produces its opposite: How come you always liked me? Wilson gives Cory language that is structurally available to him but ontologically impossible. A question that cannot be asked within the architecture of the anti-Black world pressing down on father and son alike. The double negative doesn’t cancel itself out. It creates something else: a passage. The Door of Ain’t Never Return.

The title I thought I’d written turns out to be a hieroglyph. The title I actually wrote turned out to be a vernacular utterance in Black English that had been waiting, patiently, for me to hear it.

I think about this now, in 2026, when the political landscape feels like pure foreclosure. The fortress is going up. The “No” feels absolute and permanent. What I want to suggest and what the book argues systematically, is that Black cultural production has never accepted the permanence of that “No.” Not as optimism. Not as resistance narrative. But as ontological fact: The door was never actually closed.

Toni Morrison knew this. August Wilson knew this. Ralph Ellison knew this. And on a January night in 1972, Aretha Franklin demonstrated it.

In the book, I linger with that night at New Bethel Baptist Church in Los Angeles and specifically with Aretha Franklin’s performance of “Never Grow Old” on the second night of what would find itself presented on the Amazing Grace album and in the documentary that was finally released in 2018. Viewers will recall that Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts take a break from their own recording project to be observers rather than observed that night. What the two Rolling Stones witness is the journey to the threshold of the door of ain’t never return. Aretha pulls the audience to a place where observation of Morrison’s third, if you will pardon the expression, world is possible. Where we are led to is a place of competing forces. The resistance of anti-Blackness fights its extinction, and the pull of another world seems foreign, even to those who are also participants in Aretha’s expedition to another world. Reverend Cleveland throws a towel at Aretha to disrupt the journey and Gospel icon Clara Ward has to be physically restrained from ending Aretha’s performance.

What Aretha did with that song was mine its technology to get across that barrier. She took the word “Never” and turned it, probed it, refused to let it resolve into simple negation. She built, note by note, a sonic space constructed entirely of refusal of the refusal that “never,” like the “No,” asserts, and then filled that space of negation of negation with what the refusal of refusal makes possible. When she finally has cleared the necessary sonic space, Aretha gives Toni Morrison’s world a name. Not a theoretical concept. Not a philosophical category. A name for the place: The Beautiful Home of the Soul.

That’s what this book is about. Not the Door of No Return as permanent closure that is the commonly understood consequence of the catastrophic fact of the Middle Passage and everything it created. But the door Aretha’s voice found in 1972 that Wilson’s language had been pointing toward and that Morrison’s novels had been mapping: the Door of Ain’t Never Return. The one that was never truly closed. The one that was, as Morrison wrote, “already made for me, both snug and wide open, with a doorway never needing to be closed.”

I didn’t know I’d written that title until after the book was finished. I think that’s exactly as it should be. The work teaches even its author what it’s about.

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, cultural studies, drama, Education, ethics, literature, Mass Media and Communications, Music, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Books for understanding Iran and the Middle East

Posted on March 18, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase our books that offer context for the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and responses throughout the region. All of our Middle East Studies titles are available here.

Disabling Relations: Wounded Bodyminds and Transnational Praxis, by Sona Kazemi, bears witness to disabled survivors of violence in Iran from war, incarceration, acid attacks, and torture.

How do we learn to defetishize disability in our everyday lives? In Disabling Relations, Sona Kazemi probes this and other questions that consider how processes and relations of patriarchy, imperialism, and religious fundamentalism, as well as class and ideology, rework the dialectics of disability in transnational contexts.

Read Sona Kazemi’s blog entry, Encountering Wounded Bodyminds

Proper Women: Feminism and the Politics of Respectability in Iran, by Fae Chubin provides an intersectional analysis of Iran’s feminist activism through an ethnographic study of an NGO-led women’s empowerment program.

Proper Women tells the unprecedented story of an NGO-led “women’s empowerment” program in Tehran that was created to serve young, impoverished Iranians and Afghan refugees. Fae Chubin recounts the well-intentioned efforts of cosmopolitan NGO administrators whose loyalty to liberal feminist principles of individualism, sexual autonomy, and anti-traditionalism complicated their objective of empowering marginalized women.

Read Fae Chubin’s blog entry, Complicating Female Empowerment in Iran

Contours of Israeli Politics: Jewish Ethnicity, Religious Nationalism, and Democracy, by Hannah M. Ridge, examines the effect of ethnic diversity and privilege within the Jewish Israeli population on public opinion and attitudes about identity and democracy.

There is no single Jewish ethnicity, and no single Jewish ethnic group constitutes a clear majority of Jewish Israelis. These intra-Jewish differences permit a social hierarchy within the “in-group” – Jewish Israelis – that privileges the Ashkenazi Jews of European descent over Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews of Middle Eastern backgrounds. The timely Contours of Israeli Politics focuses on the socio-political ramifications of this hierarchy within the upper stratum of Israeli society. 

Read Hannah Ridge’s blog entry, Examining Diversity and Privilege with the Jewish Israeli Population

Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs, by Jonathan Graubart, is a compelling diagnosis of the long-reigning pathologies and practices of Zionism and a prescription for reforming Jewish self-determination

Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism examines the liberal Zionist and Jewish anti-Zionist perspectives that developed in the decades following Israeli statehood. In his timely book, Jonathan Graubart, advances a non-statist vision of Jewish self-determination to be realized in a binational political arrangement that rejects Apartheid practices and features a just and collaborative coexistence of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The book’s vision advances a distinct Jewish self-determination committed to cultural enrichment and emancipation, internationalism, and the fostering of new political, social, and economic channels for attaining genuine reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Read Jonathan Graubart’s blog entry, Discovering a Liberating Vision of Jewish Self-Determination in an Age of Entrenched Apartheid and an interview with the author.

The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination, by Greg Burris, provides a window into the Palestinian freedom struggle, drawing on an analysis of Palestinian film and media.

Is there a link between the colonization of Palestinian lands and the enclosing of Palestinian minds? The Palestinian Idea argues that it is precisely through film and media that hope can occasionally emerge amidst hopelessness, emancipation amidst oppression, freedom amidst apartheid. Greg Burris employs the work of Edward W. Said, Jacques Rancière, and Cedric J. Robinson in order to locate Palestinian utopia in the heart of the Zionist present.

Read Greg Burris’ blog entry, Applying Black Radical Thought in Palestinian Film and Media.

Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut, by Ghassan Moussawi, provides the first comprehensive study to employ the lens of queer lives in the Arab World to understand everyday life disruptions, conflicts, and violence.

Disruptive Situations challenges representations of contemporary Beirut as an exceptional space for LGBTQ people by highlighting everyday life in a city where violence is the norm. Ghassan Moussawi, a Beirut native, seeks to uncover the underlying processes of what he calls “fractal orientalism,” a relational understanding of modernity and cosmopolitanism that illustrates how transnational discourses of national and sexual exceptionalism operate on multiple scales in the Arab world.

Read Ghassan Moussawi’s blog entry, Living Amidst Constant Disruptions that Keep Taking on New Forms.

Israel’s Dead Soul, by Steven Salaita, explains how Zionism became an exceptional ideology in the eyes of the West.

Israel’s Dead Soul explores the failures of Zionism as a political and ethical discourse. Steven Salaita argues that endowing nation-states with souls is a dangerous phenomenon because it privileges institutions and corporations rather than human beings.

Read Steven Salaita’s blog entry, The Unmaking of Israel’s Soul and the Making of Israel’s Dead Soul.

Filed under: american studies, cultural studies, Disability Studies, ethics, gender studies, health, History, immigration, Jewish, Labor Studies, LGBT studies, literature, Mass Media and Communications, philosophy, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, Religion, sexuality, sociology, transnational politics, Urban Studies, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Taking the Parent Trip

Posted on March 11, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Anndee Hochman, author of Parent Trip: Unexpected Roads to Form a Family, writes about writing about families.

Every writer has their obsessions. Family is mine. I’ve been writing about family matters—kinship and friendship, conception and adoption, the people we’re born to and the ones we choose—for more than thirty years.

My first book, Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home, chronicled the myriad ways women in the 1980s and early 1990s were creating family outside of conventional norms. In Anatomies: A Novella and Stories, many of my fictional protagonists were young adults hungry for kinship and connection.

And for nearly a decade, my weekly “Parent Trip” column in the Philadelphia Inquirer told the frank, wry, tender and occasionally harrowing stories of people who had just become parents.

I cast the net wide: stories of individuals and couples who formed families through adoption, conception, gestational surrogacy and family-blending. I interviewed multifaith and multiracial families, parents who were straight and queer, older and younger, single and partnered, having their first kid or their fifth. “Parent Trip” told stories of infertility, sperm and egg donation, grandparents raising grandkids, surprise pregnancies and long-sought international adoptions.

Each column included a photo of the parents and their children—images that, along with the text, became both mirrors and windows. In “Parent Trip,” some readers saw their experiences reflected, perhaps for the first time, in the pages of a major newspaper. For others, the columns offered intimate glimpses of lives utterly unlike their own.

I wanted to remind readers, every week: “See? A family can look like this. Or this. Or this.”

Over the decade that the column ran, and in the years since it ended, the political landscape has shifted seismically.

I began “Parent Trip” nine months before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that made marriage equality for same-sex couples the law of the United States. And I concluded it just over a year after that court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a decision that reversed a half-century of legalized abortion.

Today, elected officials are restricting access to gender-affirming care, and an aggressive push to deport undocumented immigrants has splintered families and hurt children nationwide.

At a time when the government is trying—through anti-trans legislation, “don’t say gay” bills and limits on what teachers can teach and students can read—to constrict the definition of family, this book does the opposite. It stretches our sense of possibility. It dismantles stereotypes. It rejoices in the particulars of human life. It reminds us that there is no single way to build or sustain a family.

To create Parent Trip, I read through more than 450 “Parent Trip” entries, revisiting a decade that included three presidents and a world-altering pandemic—along with my own daughter’s growth from an adolescent to a young adult—then selected 42 of them to include and wrote the personal essays that form the spine of this book.  

Together, those essays and stories celebrate a wild variety of families while underscoring some essential, common truths: The road toward parenthood is unpredictable. The effort requires a village. Your kids will change you. No one can forecast exactly how.

Filed under: american studies, cultural studies, gender studies, sexuality, sociology, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Superglue of Social Life

Posted on March 4, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Sébastien Tutenges and Philip Smith, editors of Collective Effervescence, write about human connection in today’s alienating, over-individualized world.

Something is happening to “collective effervescence.” The concept is no longer confined to dusty volumes of classical French sociology. Today podcast hosts, public intellectuals, and best-selling authors routinely invoke it when discussing belonging, ritual, awe, and the need for more human connection in today’s alienating, over-individualized world. The concept was formulated over one hundred years ago by the French founder of sociology, Émile Durkheim. His original understanding emphasized the positive impacts of high-energy gatherings involving physically co-present groups engaged in religious ritual activity. These events pivoted around dance, music, and chanting. There was a sense of buzz as isolated individuals became a “society” with purpose and meaning.

The truth of Durkheim’s analysis seems self-evident. We’ve all experienced collective effervescence in our everyday lives – at a concert, drinking with friends, during a wedding party, or in a sports stadium. But many questions remain. Can collective effervescence occur without physical co-presence, for instance, in live-streamed events or online gaming communities? Can it emerge in low-energy or silent group practices such as meditation or prayer? Can it be generated in the routine spaces of everyday life: courtrooms, workplaces, and bookshops? Can it be slow-burning and long-lasting rather than ecstatic and transitory? Most crucial of all, when does it generate positive solidarity and when does it fuel exclusion, deviance, or violent evil?

These questions motivated us to put together the edited volume Collective Effervescence. Although the title might be simple and unimaginative, the contents are anything but. They challenge expectations. We reached out to leading scholars to stress test the concept rather than make predictable applications. Drawing upon their latest research, the book identifies and examines for the first time the varied forms of effervescence: loud and quiet, sacred and secular, co-present and digitally mediated, euphoric and dark.

Taken together, the book shows that collective effervescence is neither a relic of ancient religion nor simply a fancy word for the excitement of crowds. It is a social superglue, adaptable and sticking to almost anything. Not only can it be squeezed out of the tube in ecstatic gatherings, it can also quietly bond  those engaged in shared contemplation, stick to the depths of the personality, catalyse crazy and criminal behaviors, bind colleagues in the workplace, and fuse with the social anxieties of our age. In a world marked by polarization, digital mediation, and armed conflict, collective effervescence is not only ubiquitous but also constantly taking new forms as it brings people together. The urgent task for our age is to understand how it is generated, when it binds, and when it burns like the droplet that got in your eye. This book takes up that challenge.

Filed under: american studies, Anthropology, cultural studies, Education, Mass Media and Communications, Music, Religion, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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