Division of Social Sciences

Merry Jewish Christmas

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 21:59:10 +0000

Merry Jewish Christmas Rachel Sauer Wed, 12/10/2025 - 14:59

Samira Mehta

How Chinese food and the movies became a time-honored tradition for American Jews

There is a meme that circulates every holiday season, an image of a sign in a restaurant window. “The Chinese Restaurant Association of the United States would like to extend our thanks to the Jewish people,” it says. “We do not completely understand your dietary customs … but we are proud and grateful that your GOD insists you eat our food on Christmas.”

Is the sign real? Perhaps not; the fact-checking site Snopes found no evidence of the association even existing. But the joke popularity points to a tradition cherished by many American Jews – Chinese food on Christmas.

But why would Jews, who do not celebrate Christmas, have Christmas traditions?

Samira Mehta is director of the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Program in Jewish Studies and an associate professor of women and gender studies.

Like many minority groups, Jews have always created ways of adapting to the societies in which they live, but whose culture they do not totally share. And one thing that means is a collection of Christmas traditions, varying by time and place. Many of them came up in interviews for my book “Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States.”

Old World festivities

Long before Jews came to the United States, some of them celebrated Christmas – participating in many of the cultural traditions, even as they avoided the religious part of the holiday.

According to Jordan Chad, author of “Christmas in Yiddish Tradition,” Jewish folklore about the holiday appears as early as the late 1300s. Plenty of Jewish communities in Europe spent Christmas Eve dancing and drinking, feasting and gambling – as many of their Christian neighbors did, when those neighbors were not in church.

Other scholars have argued that these traditions grew out of attempts to avoid studying Jewish religious texts on a Christian holiday. But Chad demonstrates that, over centuries, those customs came to celebrate the revelry of the season – though not the birth of Jesus.

Even in the 20th century, scholars such as Yaniv Feller have found, many middle- and upper-class German Jews embraced a secular Christmas, complete with a tree, a traditional dinner and presents. After all, some of those Christmas traditions stem less from religion than folk traditions and industrialization.

Given that long history, Jewish Christmas traditions are not necessarily a sign of Americanization.

That said, in the United States, Christmas is so culturally powerful – a day that almost everyone has off, and that the majority of Americans spend with their kith and kin – that many non-Christian immigrants celebrate it in a secular way, with family visits, Santa and a tree. They do not necessarily do the religious parts of the holiday, but they may well deck the halls. Certainly, my own Hindu relatives do.

And many Jews celebrate Christmas in some way because they are part of interfaith families – whether their own immediate family or extended relatives with whom they spend the day. Today, estimates place the American Jewish interfaith marriage rate as high as 50%.

Kosher-style Chinese

For plenty of contemporary Jews, however, it is profoundly important not to celebrate a secular version of Christmas. Starting in the 1970s, in fact, when American Jews were particularly worried about rising rates of interfaith marriage, many of the rabbis willing to perform ceremonies for Jewish-Christian couples made them promise to not have a Christmas tree. This happened despite the fact that, at the time, many American Jews did have Christmas trees in their homes.

Even if Jews do not want to deck the halls, though, many still have the day off. Meanwhile, their non-Jewish friends, families and co-workers are busy and much of the world is closed. And so many Jews have developed their own ways of marking the day.

Some Jewish families decorate a ‘Hanukkah bush’ as a seasonal alternative to a Christmas tree. (Photo: Jonah Green/Wikimedia Commons)

The Chinese food tradition is particularly famous. In fact, during Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan 2010 confirmation hearings, when Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham asked her where she had been on Christmas Day, she responded, “Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”

The first written mention of Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas Day comes from 1935, when, according to The New York Times, a man named Eng Shee Chuck brought chow mein and toys to a New Jersey Jewish orphanage.

His generosity was probably not why Jews started going to Chinese restaurants on Christmas; it is more likely that they were already doing so. The two communities lived cheek by jowl in many American cities, where immigrants of different sorts ended up in the same neighborhoods. And Chinese food contains little dairy, meaning it rarely violated Jewish dietary laws against mixing milk and meat.

Most Chinese cuisines do use pork and shrimp, which is forbidden by kosher laws. But many Jewish customers were happy to make an exception, especially if the forbidden food was tucked in a dumpling or otherwise out of sight – at least outside their own homes.

As new research by New York University graduate student Shiyong Lu demonstrates, Chinese restaurants were also eager to cater to American Jews: They wanted to develop white, American clientele, and here were some right in their neighborhoods.

As restaurant owners learned that Jews often eschewed pork, some began to offer traditional dishes with chicken instead – allowing more observant Jews to eat “kosher style,” without eating explicitly forbidden food. Today, there is wide variation in Jewish dietary practices, making Chinese food even more accessible for most Jews.

By the end of the 20th century, “Chinese food and a movie” had become the trope of Jewish Christmas. Because most Chinese immigrants were not Christian, their restaurants are often open on Dec. 25. And indeed, they are often filled with Jews.

Movies, volunteering and more

The same tends to be true for movie theaters. In 2012, I saw “Les Misérables” on Christmas Day in a theater that seemed to be a who who of the Atlanta Jewish community. In fact, the movies and the Chinese food are often paired, whether out on the town or at home, streaming with take out.

Jewish museums are often open and are another popular destination in cities that have them. And some Jews use Christmas Day for travel. At least in eras past, plane tickets were notably cheaper than the days around the holiday.

Another Jewish Christmas tradition is simply to go to work, so as to let Christian colleagues have the day off. Many Jewish doctors and nurses are on call, or staff the emergency room or the intensive care unit, so that their colleagues can be home.

Still other Jews perform charitable deeds on Christmas: They staff soup kitchens and food banks, bring holiday cheer to nursing homes and hospital patients, or deliver gifts to children in shelters.

Living in a culture that largely closes down each Dec. 25, many Jews have found ways of making meaning in the day – be that sharing family time over beef and broccoli, followed by a holiday blockbuster, or working to make sure that more of their colleagues can have a family day. And those, too, are Christmas traditions.

Samira Mehta is director of the Program in Jewish Studies and an associate professor of women and gender studies at the �Ͼ�Ʒ��.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How Chinese food and the movies became a time-honored tradition for American Jews.

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Streaming killed the video star

Kylie Clarke — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:12:02 +0000

Streaming killed the video star Kylie Clarke Tue, 12/02/2025 - 17:12

Jared Bahir Browsh

Once a cultural phenomenon, MTV ends five music channels in the UK; viewership in the U.S. continues its downward slide

When MTV announced earlier this year that it would be shutting down music channels at the end of 2025, the reaction was nearly unanimous: MTV still plays music?

The digital networks—MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live— will shut down in the United Kingdom, Ireland and several other countries in Europe. In the United States, MTV secondary networks—MTV2, MTV Live, MTV Classic and MTVU—will continue operating for now despite declining viewership and being carried through cable.

The changes are evidence of both the global reach MTV had at its peak and the significant changes that have occurred in television, especially over the last decade as the rise of streaming and cord cutting has led to a dramatic decline in cable and linear viewing.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

Music programming has been a part of television since the 1930s, when radio broadcasters transitioned to the visual medium and many of the early experimental broadcasts in the United States and Europe featured live musical performances. As television matured following World War II, music continued to be an integral part of its growth with variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, which debuted as Toast of the Town in 1948, and American Bandstand, which debuted as a local program in Philadelphia in 1952 featuring top musical acts.

These shows not only brought musical acts into people homes but were one of the few opportunities for African Americans to be seen on the quickly growing medium. The Ethel Waters Show, a variety special that aired on NBC in New York City in 1939, was the first television show to be hosted by an African American. Later, as television spread, Nat “King” Cole hosted his own show, which aired nationally beginning in 1956, but struggled to gain a permanent sponsor in its 13 months on air, causing Cole to comment “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” In spite of this type of prejudice, Ed Sullivan and American Bandstand regularly featured Black artists in the 1940s and 1950s before Brown v. Board of Education overturned segregation in schools.

Musicals before videos

Short musical movies are as old as sound films, with series like Silly Symphonies debuting in 1929 and featuring animation produced around classical music. Warner Bros. followed Disney lead with Looney Tunes in 1930 and Merrie Melodies in 1931, featuring music from the Warner Bros. catalog. In 1929, RCA produced the short film Black and Tanwith Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, set in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1930s, Paramount produced a series of short films featuring Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, offering visuals as a companion to his music.

In 1964, Top of the Pops debuted on the BBC, airing interviews, live performances and music news based on weekly record charts. The program also featured pre-taped music videos, then known as promotional films, when artists could not perform in the studio live. The Beatles’ film A Hard Day Night was also released in 1964, accompanied by the album of the same name and functioning as a promotional vehicle for the band and its music. Inspired by the Beatles’ film, “The Monkees” TV show debuted on NBC in 1966 with a made-for-TV band and their music at the center of the series. In animation, Saturday morning producers took a cue from the popularity of The Monkees with young viewers and made series like “The Archie Show” and “Josie and the Pussycats” following the same model. The fictional band The Archies even scored a No. 1 hit with “Sugar, Sugar.”

In the United States, Ed Sullivan ended his run on television in 1971 and the following year NBC “The Midnight Special” and ABC “In Concert" debuted, featuring filmed live performances and the occasional music video.

Queen Bohemian Rhapsody is often recognized as a turning point in music videos. Released on “Top of the Pops” in 1975, the video production value and popularity led to a new age of music video production and to music videos becoming a vital tool to promote singles.

Throughout the 1970s, dedicated music video programs, including Australia “Countdown” and “Sounds,” aired more frequently. In the United States, cable television was quickly expanding and USA Network/Showtime Video Concert Hall, which debuted in 1978, featured music videos. In 1980, Pop Clips aired as a weekly show on Nickelodeon, produced by former Monkees member and music video pioneer Michael Nesmith.

Nickelodeon, the first children cable network, had been launched the previous year, in April 1979, by Warner Cable Communications; American Express purchased 50% of Warner Cable Corp. in September of that year. Soon after, Warner-Amex began to develop a network to attract the underserved teenage audience. Seeing music as a way to connect with the demographic, the company was originally going to purchase and expand Pop Clips, but instead developed its own Music Television network.

MTV launched on Aug. 1, 1981, and fittingly, The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first video played on the new network. The new network impact on the music industry was nearly immediate, as bands with little radio play like The Human League and Men at Work saw a significant uptick in record sales. It also kicked off the Second British Invasion, as the music video format was featured for years on British television. As U.S. acts scrambled to leverage the format, music videos imported from Britain by bands like The Police filled the MTV schedule.

In spite of the demonstrable cultural impact of MTV, the network still faced challenges from the limited proliferation of cable and the unwillingness of cable companies to carry the station due to concerns over the long-term viability of the network. After negotiations with cable operators resulted in little progress, MTV decided to go directly to the consumer. The “I want my MTV” campaign featured famous musical stars like Mick Jagger and David Bowie to promote the network and persuade television viewers to call their cable providers and pressure them to pick up MTV.

Controversial MTV

MTV rise in the early 1980s was not without controversy. Black artists were rarely seen on the channel, a fact Bowie raised in a 1983 interview on the network. Programmers for MTV said that the channel rock focus and fears of alienating fans in middle America prevented Black artists from being placed in heavy rotation. When Michael Jackson “Billie Jean” was rejected by MTV, the president of his label, CBS Records, threatened to pull all of the label artists from the network. MTV relented and the video debuted on March 10, 1983. Boosted by the music videos for “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and especially the title track “Thriller,” the album went on to become the highest selling record of all time. The popularity of Jackson videos helped him to become the “King of Pop.” The music video for the title track of Jackson next album, “Bad” premiered in primetime on CBS, and the premiere for the video for “Remember the Time” was simulcast on multiple networks including ABC, NBC and MTV.

The following year was a turning point for the network. On the business side, Warner spun off Nickelodeon and MTV into their own company, MTV Networks, later buying Amex stake in the company and then turning around and selling all of MTV Networks to Viacom, completing the deal in 1986. Several new programs and special events also debuted on the network in 1984, including the MTV Music Video Awards, the Top 20 Countdown and the WWE event The Brawl to End It All, the first live wrestling event on cable. Cyndi Lauper featured wrestler Captain Lou Albano in her 1983 video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” leading to a WWE storyline featuring the pop star and cross-marketing that benefitted both MTV and the WWE.

MTV influence spread quickly throughout the 1980s, influencing other media while earning criticism for its effect on the music industry. Shows like Miami Vice introduced the aesthetics and music of MTV into scripted television. On the other hand, MTV was also criticized for leading the music industry to focus more on the visual appeal of artists than their music.

The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 helped remove regulations that were slowing cable growth, leading to further expansion of MTV and other cable networks into new markets. Throughout the 1980s, the network continued to expand its original programming, moving away from the radio-style format hosted by its video jockeys, or VJs. This included more genre-specific shows like Headbangers Ball, which featured heavy metal, and the alternative rock-focused 120 Minutes, along with Dial MTV, which allowed viewers to call in and vote for their favorite videos.

Even with the expansion of music played on MTV, there were still genres the network overlooked. With MTV playing very little country music, in 1983 both Country Music Television and The Nashville Network launched. The same year, Black Entertainment Television also grew from a programming block on the USA Network into an independent network, airing music videos from Black artists. In 1985, MTV sister network VH1 premiered, focused on an older audience with adult contemporary music. All of these networks are now owned by Paramount.

MTV also expanded beyond the United States when MTV Europe launched in 1987. One of the new network early shows, Yo!, featured hip-hop artists and became one of its most popular programs, Yo! MTV Raps, which debuted in the United States in 1988 and helped expand hip-hop visibility. The genre had been limited on the network to a few artists like Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys, both of which heavily sampled rock music. Also in 1987, This Week in Rock launched MTV News, which originally focused on music and pop culture news but expanded into politics during the 1992 election, focusing on issues impacting its younger audience.

MTV continued to expand their programming in the late 1980s and early 1990s, airing the game show Remote Control and giving young comedians Ben Stiller and Jon Stewart their own shows. In 1992, MTV Sports debuted focusing on extreme sports, helping to bring skateboarding, BMX, and other alternative sports to the mainstream leading to the X Games in 1995. The same year modern reality TV was launched with The Real World. This also marked the beginning of the shift away from music videos as more reality shows and docuseries, like Road Rules and True Life, filled more of the schedule throughout the 1990s.

The last gasp for the music in Music Television was Total Request Live (TRL), which debuted in 1998. Driven by the popularity of boy bands, “pop princesses,” hip-hop, and pop rock, the show aired in the afternoon as teenagers were getting home from school. The program revitalized the role of the VJ and launched the careers of Carson Daly, Hilarie Burton, La La Anthony, and Vanessa Lachey. By the time TRL ended its original 10 year run, most of the music videos on the network were airing in late night.

As MTV moved into other programming, the internet became the primary platform for music videos. The non-linear format offered by early MTV with a playlist of very different videos played back to back forecasted our relationship with YouTube, TikTok, and other social media sites. MTV motivated the evolution of the music industry and the explosion of music videos that continue today, even as Paramount moves away from the M in MTV.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Once a cultural phenomenon, MTV ends five music channels in the UK; viewership in the U.S. continues its downward slide.

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On Thanksgiving, pass the gravy and a tight spiral

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 19:10:19 +0000

On Thanksgiving, pass the gravy and a tight spiral Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/17/2025 - 12:10

Jared Bahir Browsh

The tradition of football on the fourth Thursday in November is almost as old as the holiday itself, bringing families together in an important cultural touchpoint

As families unite for the Thanksgiving holiday, it is likely the gathering will include watching football before and after the traditional dinner. Thanksgiving football is almost as old as the holiday itself, with more than a century and a half of history on the holiday

Most historians recognize the Nov. 6, 1869, matchup between Princeton University (then The College of New Jersey) and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as the first official American football game. “Foot-ball” was played much differently then, looking more like a hybrid of soccer and rugby. Rutgers won by a score of 6-4 with about 100 spectators looking on.

Just 11 days later, an advertisement appeared in The Evening Telegraph, a Philadelphia newspaper, announcing a “foot-ball match" between Young America Cricket Club and the Germantown Cricket Club to be played in the Germantown section of the city on Thanksgiving. There are no reports of the game, but considering it took place just 70 miles southwest of New Brunswick, it was likely played under the same rules as the college game.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

Abraham Lincoln, influenced by a series of essays written by editor and activist Sarah Josepha Hale, had established Thanksgiving in 1863, proclaiming the last Thursday of November a holiday. Subsequent presidents continued this traditional proclamation until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt named the second-to-last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving to provide an extra week for holiday shopping. This created a political rift with Republicans, who declared that day “Franksgiving” and encouraged Americans to celebrate the holiday the following week.

Congress solidified the date of Thanksgiving in 1941, with Roosevelt signing the bill on Dec. 26, 1942, officially making the fourth Thursday of November the Thanksgiving holiday. By this time, football on Thanksgiving had become a tradition, with some high schools establishing rivalries as early as 1875 and annual intercollegiate games beginning in 1876.

Princeton and Yale played a yearly game on Thanksgiving between 1876 and 1881 before the Intercollegiate Football Association declared its championship would take place on the holiday beginning in 1882. The University of Michigan played annually on Thanksgiving between 1885 and 1905, including a series of games against the University of Chicago that helped firmly establish football presence on the holiday. Many New England high schools play their rivalry game, or Turkey Bowl, on the holiday, allowing alumni to come back to root on their alma mater, a tradition that celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2025.

The third edition of the “Border War” between the University of Kansas and University of Missouri in 1893 took place on Thanksgiving in Kansas City, Missouri, a tradition that continued through 1910, when the conference began requiring all games to be played on college campuses. Like many rivalry games, it is now played in late November, typically the weekend after Thanksgiving.

As old as pro football

Thanksgiving games are also as old as professional football itself—the first recognized professional team, the Allegheny Athletic Association in Western Pennsylvania, regularly played on Thanksgiving. Regional professional leagues in Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania scheduled marquee late-season matchups and championships on Thanksgiving. The Ohio League and other professional and semi-professional football organizations did stop holding Thanksgiving games for a short time, given that many of their players were high school coaches whose teams played that day.

From its inception in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, the NFL began playing games on Thanksgiving. The Detroit Panthers played their first Thanksgiving game in 1925, a tradition carried by several Detroit franchises including the Detroit Lions. In the Lions’ first season in 1934, owner George A. Richards saw a Thanksgiving Day game as a way to market the new team. Richards also owned NBC radio affiliate WJR, and he negotiated that the matchup against the Chicago Bears be broadcast nationally.

The NFL hold on Thanksgiving was disrupted in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Franksgiving controversy led to a political-party split over when states would recognize the holiday, making it difficult for football teams to schedule games across state lines. The one exception in the NFL was the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles; being in the same state, they were able to play the game when Pennsylvania chose to recognize Franksgiving.

Yale and Princeton, here playing at Yale Field on Nov. 20, 1897, had an annual match-up on Thanksgiving between 1876-1881 before the Intercollegiate Football Association declared its championship would take place on the holiday beginning in 1882. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

World War II disrupted all sports, with the NFL hit especially hard by the loss of personnel, causing some teams to suspend operations. In one notable case, it led the Eagles and Steelers to combine teams to play as the Steagles for a season in 1943.

When NFL Thanksgiving games resumed in 1945, only the Lions continued the tradition. The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) played on Thanksgiving when the league launched in 1946. Both the AAFC Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers played on Thanksgiving in 1947 before joining the NFL after the AAFC folded in 1949.

The Lions and their rival Green Bay Packers, which play each other on Thanksgiving this year, battled on the holiday every year between 1951 and 1963. During this time, the two franchises’ fortunes seemingly switched, with Vince Lombardi taking over the Packers and leading the team to six NFL championships in the 1960s, of which they won five, including the first two Super Bowls. The Lions were the only NFL team to play on Thanksgiving during this period, except in 1952, when the Dallas Texans, in their only season, were scheduled to play the Chicago Bears. The Texans-Bears game had to be moved to Akron, Ohio, due to a scheduling conflict in Dallas. The Bears, underestimating the expansion team, sent their second unit to Akron and were upset by the Texans in the team only win of their sole season.

Not on Friday or Saturday

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 allowed the NFL to negotiate media rights on behalf of the entire league, with the league agreeing to not broadcast on Fridays and Saturdays—a concession made to protect traditional scheduling of high school on Friday and college football on Saturday. Thursdays were an exception, so it did not affect the broadcasting of football games on Thanksgiving, although it would be another four decades until Thursday night games became a weekly fixture for the NFL.

Dallas returned to Thanksgiving in 1966, when Cowboys’ President Tex Schramm saw a holiday game as a way to publicize the team that was founded in 1960. Schramm also felt there would be an advantage for the team, given that the visiting team would have one less day of practice due to travel. The Cowboys joined the Lions as a permanent fixture on Thanksgiving, hosting a game on the holiday every year since 1966, except for 1975 and 1977. In those two years, the St. Louis Cardinals hosted over the much more popular Cowboys, who had become consistent Super Bowl contenders. The Cowboys’ success in the period and their appearance in the nationally televised Thanksgiving game led to their becoming “America Team.”

St. Louis also had a long-running tradition of the “Turkey Bowl Game” between high school powerhouses Kirkwood Pioneers and Webster Groves Statesmen. The matchup, which started in 1928, is an example of Thanksgiving presence in high school football. Separately, Norwich Free Academy and New London High School in Connecticut have been playing the “Ye Olde Ball Game” since 1875.

The Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons play on Thanksgiving Day in 2005. (Photo: Dave Hogg/Wikimedia Commons)

Historically, many high school sports associations ended their seasons around Thanksgiving, allowing for championship games and rivalry matchups to be held on the holiday. State tournaments and shifts in sports seasons have disrupted this tradition in some places, but Thanksgiving continues to be a major day for high school football, especially in New England and the northeastern United States where these traditions began.

Football fans typically have very few obligations on Thanksgiving, given its status as a holiday. The holiday intersection with the end of the high school and college football seasons has meant playing on Thanksgiving quickly became a tradition for football. This has only intensified with the advent of television, as families use sports to come together or even escape tensions, which is why the NFL Thanksgiving games are among the league highest-rated regular-season contests. This popularity led to a third primetime game being added to the schedule to complement the early afternoon Lions game and midafternoon Cowboys game.

The third primetime game was partially motivated by the limited opportunity for American Football League teams to play in the game. When the AFL launched in 1960, it scheduled Thanksgiving Day games; however, when the league merged with the NFL in 1970, the Lions and Cowboys, two NFC teams, continued to be the sole hosts of Thanksgiving Day games. This meant that fewer AFC teams played on Thanksgiving and could only be the away team.

Playing in primetime

The first primetime Thanksgiving matchup, played in 2006, featured the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs and marked the premiere of Thursday Night Football. NBC obtained the rights to the primetime Thanksgiving game in 2012, which continued in spite of Amazon gaining exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football in 2022. The following year, the first Black Friday game aired on Amazon, further leveraging the holiday and shopping season. The game is played in the afternoon to avoid conflicts with the Sports Broadcasting Act, which bans the NFL from Friday night broadcasts during the high school season.

While a national audience watched, there have been several memorable games and traditions during the holiday game. The first overtime game on Thanksgiving was in 1980, with the Bears returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown—the shortest overtime in NFL history. The Bounty Bowl in 1989 intensified the rivalry between the Eagles and Cowboys after Philadelphia was accused of offering a reward for injuring the Cowboys kicker. In 2012, the infamous Butt Fumble occurred on Thanksgiving, when New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez ran into the backside of his own teammate. The fumble was picked up by the New England Patriots and returned for a touchdown.

Teams often wear their alternative jerseys on Thanksgiving to mark the holiday game, including throwback jerseys and the NFL monochromatic “Color Rush” uniforms. Halftime has also become a spectacle during Thanksgiving games, and since 1997 the Salvation Army has kicked off its Red Kettle Campaign during halftime of the Dallas game. A halftime concert has also been added to the games over time, with Shaboozey, Lainey Wilson and Lindsey Stirling performing at the three 2024 games.

Considering football on Thanksgiving is almost as old as the federal declaration of the holiday itself, it is no surprise it has become synonymous with the holiday. With fewer shared cultural experiences in this oversaturated media environment, the NFL remains one of the few forms of popular culture that crosses age, gender and political affiliation, helping to ease possible tensions and, along with food, bring families together during the holidays.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The tradition of football on the fourth Thursday in November is almost as old as the holiday itself, bringing families together in an important cultural touchpoint

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Remembering Jane Goodall vision for the future

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 23:34:55 +0000

Remembering Jane Goodall vision for the future Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/03/2025 - 16:34

Laura DeLuca

The renowned scientist and environmental advocate instilled hope and fostered conservation relationships that prioritized local knowledge and involvement; she also had strong connections to �Ͼ�Ʒ��

Long before I conducted anthropological fieldwork in East Africa, taught secondary school mathematics in Kenya and directed a global seminar in Tanzania, I admired Jane Goodall. As a hardy teen growing up in the Baltimore suburbs, I worshipped Goodall because of her love for chimpanzees, her intelligence, her compassion and her sense of adventure.

I hesitate to admit that, as a compact, muscular teen, I also coveted Goodall long, lanky legs, smooth blond ponytail and British matched-set-khaki-with-binoculars look. Like so many other American animal and nature lovers, I wanted to be like her.

I arrived in East Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya nearly 30 years after Goodall left England to study chimpanzees near Gombe, Tanzania. I am 30 years her junior and arrived in East Africa at the same age she did—mid-20s. In my case, I was assigned to teach at Bishop O’Koth Secondary School outside of Kisumu, Kenya.

Laura DeLuca is an anthropologist, director of the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Global Seminar Tanzania and guest director for the Global Seminar: Sustainability & Social Entrepreneurship in Bali, Indonesia. She also is a faculty member in the Stories and Societies Residential Academic Program.

One thing I really admired about Goodall was that she was humble and moved beyond the “white savior” model of conservation—even while benefitting from it. While Goodall was a product of her time and was inspired by books starring Tarzan and Dr. Doolittle—whose core stories now seem to have colonial underpinning—she recognized the importance of community-based conservation efforts that met the needs of Tanzanian residents. That was in contrast to some other non-native researchers, who were often hostile to locals because they believed they were a threat to conservation efforts.

I was teaching about the fortress conservation model in my ANTH 1155 course in Sewall on Oct. 2, the day after Goodall passed away. My students discussed Jim Igoe book Conservation and Globalization, about Tanzania and Maasai evictions, so it was in the forefront of my mind.

I held a moment of silence to honor Goodall, following which one of my students, Micah Frye, reminded me that Goodall visited Whittier Elementary School in Boulder in 2013. During her visit, Goodall spoke about her “Roots & Shoots” program, which focuses on youth education in environmental and humanitarian issues.

I teach about fortress conservation in ANTH 1155 because it has a big impact in Africa. It is a conservation model focused on creating protected areas, like Gombe National Park, from which human activity is excluded to safeguard biodiversity from perceived local threats. This approach, often rooted in colonial practices, frequently leads to the forced eviction of indigenous communities and local peoples, undermining their rights and cultural practices.

Goodall moved beyond the fortress model, even as she saw the importance of the national park status that her second husband helped secure for Gombe. To move beyond a fortress model, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) to inspire people not only to protect great apes and their habitats, but also to create a more harmonious world for all living things, including humans. The Institute work includes ongoing scientific research on chimpanzees and community-centered conservation programs to protect species and habitats and help communities realize the benefits from ecotourism. It also includes the Roots & Shoots program to empower youth to create positive change for animals, people, and the environment.

In fact, Goodall wrote the preface to The Solutionary Way, an inspiring book I am using in my Innovating Sustainability SSIR 1010 in Sewall Stories and Societies Residential Academic course. In early October, after Goodall passing, students wrote a reflection assignment on Goodall regarding lessons that inspired them.

I also appreciate Goodall work to hire Tanzanian researchers and scientists in a field that was historically dominated by ex-patriate Europeans, British and Americans. In addition to current Tanzanian leaders Freddy Kimaro, Deus Mjungu, Esther Sabuni, Mwanang’ombe and Erasto Njavike, Goodall hired my dear grad school friend Shadrack Mkolle Kamenya. During our time as graduate students at �Ͼ�Ʒ�� in the mid-1990s, we spent hours studying together in Hale Anthropology Building (which Kamenya found creepy at night since the Nubian mummies were stored on the bottom floor).

Kamenya told me stories of his youth, including how as a child playing alongside the lake shore, he used to see Goodall taking a small motorboat on Lake Tanganyika to get to her research. He and his friends nicknamed her the “mzungu was Kasekela” or the “white lady of Kasekela.” (Kasekela is a forest in Gombe.)

Kamenya was the first Tanzanian director of research at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). He worked with the JGI for nearly 30 years in research, conservation and education before retiring in 2025 and lives in Kigoma, Tanzania. From August 1997 to 2005, he managed chimpanzee research at the Gombe Stream Research Centre (GSRC) in Gombe National Park.

Kamenya and I have been communicating more since he has retired, and I sent him a WhatsApp message after Goodall died on Oct. 1, asking about their interactions. He recalled how she cared and spoke for nature, which came from her heart, and how her wisdom and knowledge enabled her to talk with all kinds of people: young and old, politicians and leaders, poor and distressed.

In his section of the book Jane Goodall at 90: Celebrating an Astonishing Lifetime of Science, Advocacy, Humanitarianism, Hope and Peace, Kamenya wrote, “What a privilege to be around somebody who makes use of the time she gets on the planet to do the best she can for the environment, other people and biodiversity and very little for herself.”

Shadrack Kamenya (PhDAnth'97) was the first Tanzanian director of research at the Jane Goodall Institute, working for nearly 30 years in research, conservation and education before retiring in 2025. (Photo: Laura DeLuca)

Goodall Colorado connections

The IMAX film “Discovering Chimpanzees: The Remarkable World of Jane Goodall” was part of an exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in 2003. I literally gasped in the middle of the dark theater when I saw pictures of Kamenya in the film, which I attended with my friend Karen Cockburn of Africa Travel.

That was just one of many Colorado connections to Goodall that I’ve experienced. She had many friends in Boulder, especially close colleague and collaborator Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at �Ͼ�Ʒ��. Bekoff is not only a fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and a past Guggenheim Fellow; he was also an ambassador for Roots & Shoots.

Herbert Covert, a �Ͼ�Ʒ�� professor emeritus of anthropology, also was connected to Goodall through Kamenya: He served as Kamenya dissertation adviser and noted that she “aided Kamenya when it was most needed.” To elaborate, funding outside of �Ͼ�Ʒ�� that had been promised to support Kamenya PhD training did not come through for reasons that were not related to Shadrack academic progress. Covert and Kamenya pursued several other funding avenues with limited success until Goodall learned about Kamenya. Not only did Goodall help arrange for Kamenya dissertation research in the Gombe, but she also provided most of the necessary financial support needed to allow him to finish his degree.

Goodall also influenced Covert research of the behavioral ecology and conservation of endangered colobine monkeys and gibbons of Vietnam. He recalls her as a “sweet person.” Covert reports that he modeled his engagement with Vietnamese colleagues after what he had learned from Goodall; specifically, he requested that they set the research agenda. Thus, Covert and colleagues shared activities that met the needs of local communities with trust and respect.

Partly because of her close connections with Bekoff, Goodall visited Boulder frequently. I remember seeing her on Oct. 1, 2015, at the sold-out CU Events Center, where she gave the 50th George Gamow Memorial Lecture.

At the beginning of her presentation, Goodall charmingly demonstrated her famous chimpanzee call—a vocalization known as a “pant-hoot”—captivating the Boulder audience and bringing her message to life. She learned to mimic this call during her time observing chimpanzees in Gombe and used it as a distinctive greeting. In the talk, Goodall told the students in attendance, “You’re lucky. You live in Boulder, where there really is concern for the environment (and) where wonderful things are happening. We want that to spread around the world.”

Jane Goodall gave the 50th Gamow Lecture at �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Oct. 1, 2015.

On the same day as her talk at �Ͼ�Ʒ��, Goodall, who was 81 at the time, planted trees at Horizons K-8 Charter School. On the same trip, she took time to speak with inmates at the Boulder County Jail who were part of one of Goodall Roots & Shoots program, run with great passion for more than 15 years by Bekoff. The Roots & Shoots program was so effective that Goodall expanded it to other jails.

In 2018, Goodall taught a free online course through �Ͼ�Ʒ�� for K-12 teachers—a partnership between �Ͼ�Ʒ�� and Roots & Shoots.

Participants in the six-week class had access to more than 13 hours of service-oriented training and activities with Goodall and Roots & Shoots staff. The course, offered through Coursera, along with other Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), taught participants how to identify and implement a local service-learning campaign using the Roots & Shoots program model. The service-learning curriculum equipped participants with education resources to discover the differences between service-learning and community service and apply the Roots & Shoots model to help youth have a voice in identifying and addressing needs in their community.

“There are many reasons to be hopeful for the future of our planet, but perhaps most inspiring is the energy, commitment and hard work of young people who we can empower as they grow to be better, more compassionate decision makers within their society,” Goodall said at the time. “I am so glad that through this Roots & Shoots online course collaboration with �Ͼ�Ʒ��, we’re able to share a message of hope and a call to action with a wider audience than ever before.”

Laura DeLuca is the director of the Global Seminar Tanzania and guest director for the Global Seminar: Sustainability & Social Entrepreneurship in Bali, Indonesia, an anthropologist and a faculty member in the Stories and Societies Residential Academic Program.

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Top image: Jane Goodall in Gombe National Park (Photo: Simon Fraser University/Flickr)

Voters’ dislike of PAC donations cuts across political lines

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 17:12:52 +0000

Voters’ dislike of PAC donations cuts across political lines Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/03/2025 - 10:12

Bradley Worrell

�Ͼ�Ʒ�� political scientist Michelangelo Landgrave research finds Republicans and independents share Democrats’ concerns over corporate donations in federal elections

In a time when political consensus is difficult to find, one topic that cuts across partisan lines is American voters’ disdain for political action committee (PAC) money in federal elections.

That one of the key findings of research recently published in the journal Research and Politics, which was co-authored by Michelangelo Landgrave, a �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Political Science assistant professor whose research focus includes campaign finance and public opinions on how it can be reformed. The paper was co-authored by Aubree Hardesty, one of Landgrave �Ͼ�Ʒ�� postdoctoral fellows.

Pointing to a 2017 Washington Post story, Landgrave and his co-authors note in their paper that people surveyed for the article said money in politics and wealthy political donors are primary causes of political dysfunction.

�Ͼ�Ʒ�� political scientist Michelangelo Landgrave and his research colleagues found that Republicans, Democrats and independents all share concerns over corporate donations in federal elections.

“What we found is that it not money itself that people oppose,” Landgrave clarifies. “People are fine with small donations—$5 or $10 from an individual. What they oppose are massive contributions from corporations that ordinary citizens simply can’t compete with.”

As the research paper notes, in the 2024 election cycle, PACs contributed about $5.6 billion to presidential and congressional campaigns, representing about 65% of total contributions.

This distinction—between small, individual donations and large, corporate checks—is central to understanding public opinion on campaign finance, Landgrave says, and voters are concerned that PACs have outsized influence with candidates.

Who giving the money?

Voters often view PACs as conduits from special interests, allowing corporations, unions and wealthy donors to channel significant funds into the political system. Landgrave says most PAC contributions come from older, wealthier and disproportionately white Americans. Asian Americans are an emerging group in this donor landscape, but Black and Latino communities remain underrepresented in campaign financing, he says.

“That raises equity concerns,” Landgrave says. “It not that older white voters shouldn’t have influence—they should—but so should African Americans, Latinos and especially younger voters. It not just about race; it about age, class and general representation.”

And while some PACs, such as the National Rifle Association or Emily List, are notably partisan or ideological, many are more pragmatic than political, Landgrave says. Companies such as Walmart and McDonald often contribute to both Republican and Democratic campaigns—hedging their bets to maintain influence regardless of which party wins, he notes.

Public attitudes: a bipartisan dislike

As the researchers surveyed voters, Landgrave says one of the biggest surprises was the lack of a stark partisan divide on the issue of PAC donations.

“Starting this project, we assumed that there was going to be major partisan differences in public opinion. We assumed that Democrats—much more than Republicans—would be much more concerned about the amount of money in American politics,” he says. “But one of our big findings was that Democrats and Republicans, and also independents, want their politicians to not be accepting this PAC money.”

Again, the underlying concern is that PACs have outsized influence with politicians in return for their contributions, because those donations tend to be larger than those of individual donors, Landgrave says. He notes that previous research has found that less than 1% of Americans give more than $200 in political contributions in a given year. (For their part, PACs can contribute up to $3,500 per candidate.)

“How much influence they (PACs) actually get for their contributions is a subject for debate, but the perception by voters is that it really undermines the democratic values that we have,” Landgrave says. “The underlying concern voters have is that everyone should be able to give, but the amount should be constrained enough that, for example, one person making six figures is not able to make much bigger donations than the guy making $40,000 or $20,000 a year.”

"We assumed that Democrats—much more than Republicans—would be much more concerned about the amount of money in American politics. But one of our big findings was that Democrats and Republicans, and also independents, want their politicians to not be accepting this PAC money,” says �Ͼ�Ʒ�� researcher Michelangelo Landgrave.

The study findings suggest that swearing off PAC donations can be a winning strategy for Republicans and independents as well as Democrats, Landgrave says.

“While Republicans at the national level have not embraced this idea, these findings lead me to believe that an enterprising Republican candidate could make their name, especially at the primary level, by keeping their same policy positions, but really presenting themselves as this anti-corporate, populist individual,” he says.

Risks and rewards of swearing off PAC money

In recent U.S. election cycles, some candidates have made headlines by vowing not to accept PAC donations, including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, who during her 2020 campaign said she “swore off PAC money to make a statement.” She was not the only one.

Landgrave notes in his paper that 44 candidates (43 Democrats and one Republican) refused PAC money during the 2020 election cycle.

Landgrave says politicians swearing off PAC contributions is a trend that has gained momentum since the mid-2010s, mirroring earlier political reform efforts dating back to the Progressive Era of the late 1890s to early 1920s, when reformers sought to address political corruption that extended to buying political offices.

Today, candidates such as Bernie Saunders, D-Vermont, have successfully built brand identities around refusing corporate donations, drawing support even from those who may not fully align with their policy platforms, Landgrave says.

His research suggests voters place as much weight on a candidate campaign finance stance as they do on hot-button issues such as gun control.

“That a big deal,” he says. “Gun control is one of the most polarizing, mobilizing issues in U.S. politics. If a candidate position on PAC money can mobilize voters to a similar degree, that a serious strategic advantage.”

Show me the (small) money

Still, given how astronomically expensive modern federal election campaigns have become, is swearing off PAC money viable moving forward?

Yes, but with caveats, Landgrave says.

He references an earlier paper by one of his co-authors that found that rejecting PAC money can be a powerful campaign message—especially when it clearly communicated to voters. That earlier paper noted that candidates who reject PAC money see a surge in small-dollar donations. While those contributions do not fully replace corporate funds, Landgrave says they often make up 70 to 80% of the shortfall.

“It a significant substitution effect,” he says. “You lose $1 million from PACs but you might get $700,000 to $800,000 from small donors instead.”

However, Landgrave says this model may not scale indefinitely.

“Right now, if you are the sort of candidate who swears off big corporate influence money, there enough donors that care about that to compensate you to a degree,” he says. “What unclear is what happens at scale. If every candidate rejected PAC contributions, would enough people change culturally to make up what they’re losing? If there only a few thousand people who care about this and do this, it won’t work if everyone rejects the money.”

What do voters actually know?

A common critique of public opinion surveys is that voters don’t really understand the issues they’re being asked about. But Landgrave research challenges that assumption when it comes to campaign financing.

“Right now, if you are the sort of candidate who swears off big corporate influence money, there enough donors that care about that to compensate you to a degree.”

“We’ve done follow-up work on public knowledge,” he says. “And while voters don’t ace these quizzes, they perform reasonably well. For instance, many people guess that the maximum federal contribution limit is around $3,000. The correct number is $3,500, so they’re close.

Americans surprisingly know the general rules. Maybe not all of the details, but they know more than we probably think.”

In short, the average voter may not be a political scientist, but they understand enough to form meaningful opinions—and increasingly, those opinions lean toward curbing corporate influence in elections, Landgrave says.

Studying union PACs and cultural change

Landgrave says his research on political action committees and campaign finance are ongoing. His next line of research looks at how voters view union-backed PACs, which are structured similarly but are rooted in worker representation.

Initial findings are surprising, he says.

“Americans seem to be OK with union PACs. And what even more surprising—so are Republicans. It preliminary, but it suggests people view unions differently, perhaps because they’re perceived as bottom-up organizations, rather than top-down like corporations.”

Meanwhile, looking ahead, Landgrave has another topic he would like to pursue regarding PACs and campaigns.

“In addition to the union angle, I would definitely be interested in seeing young Americans’ attitudes toward money in politics,” he says. “I can tell you that, just talking with my undergrad students, they seem even more skeptical of corporate money in politics than previous generations. They’re not anti-money—they’re fine with small donations—but they’re deeply opposed to corporate influence.”

However, Landgrave is skeptical that Congress might one day pass sweeping reform to limit or eliminate PAC donations.

“I don’t see that happening at the federal level,” he says. “The people who reach Congress are, by and large, products of the existing system.”

Instead, he sees more potential for state-level reforms, through voter pressure and ballot initiatives that limit PAC influence—a strategy that he says echoes earlier populist movements, particularly in the Plains and Rocky Mountain regions.

“Our campaign finance system isn’t set in stone,” Landgrave says. “Other countries do it differently. We could, too—if we decided that what we want.”

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�Ͼ�Ʒ�� political scientist Michelangelo Landgrave research finds Republicans and independents share Democrats’ concerns over corporate donations in federal elections.

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How Super Mario helped Nintendo level up

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 16:06:55 +0000

How Super Mario helped Nintendo level up Rachel Sauer Fri, 10/24/2025 - 10:06

Jared Bahir Browsh

Forty years after the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the name remains synonymous with worldwide gaming and technological innovation

When Nintendo released the Switch 2 on June 5, it marked the twelfth distinct console the video game company has sold in the United States. Its first, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), celebrates its 40th anniversary this month; it launched in New York City on Oct. 18, 1985, before launching in other cities, including Los Angeles, in 1986.

Although they are known primarily as a video game company, Nintendo roots date back to 1889, when it was founded in Japan as a trading card company. The company did well enough to stay in business through World War II, but its true turning point was in 1959, when it obtained the license to include characters from the Walt Disney Company on its cards, opening the children market to Nintendo. The company ventured into toys in 1968 and introduced the Beam Gun two years later, which was an optoelectrical game in which players shot physical targets with light. Electronics giant Magnovox then hired Nintendo to create a light gun for its video game system, the Odyssey, which came out in 1971.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

Like many toy companies making plastic toys, Nintendo struggled during the Oil Crisis of 1973-74, which led to increases in material costs. In response, Nintendo turned its attention to video games, strengthening its partnership with Magnavox to distribute the Odyssey in Japan and also contracting with the company to manufacture microprocessors for its own video game console, the Color TV Game, which launched in 1978. Nintendo was looking to profit from the growing video game market.

Video game consoles at that time were limited and only offered a small number of games, many of which were variations of games like Pong. The cartridge system had been invented in 1974 and licensed to Fairchild Camera and Instrument for its Channel F system in 1976. Jerry Lawson, one of the very few Black game developers, helped improve the design of the cartridges, or “Videocarts,” for release of the Channel F. Unfortunately, the $170 price tag ($950 in 2025) for the system and the $20 ($110 in 2025) for each cartridge, along with limited marketing, led the system to quickly be surpassed by the Atari 2600, released in 1977, which had a similar price point but more action games and arcade ports and a higher marketing budget.

Even as the home console market grew with advancing technology, the arcade market exploded, since arcade cabinets could contain more circuitry and computing power than their home counterparts. Arcades entered their golden age in the late 1970s, with several space-themed games like Asteroids and Space Invaders leading both children and adults to spend quarter after quarter to beat these games. Arguably, the most popular game to emerge in this era was Namco Pac-Man, which debuted in 1980. The gameplay was not just addictive, but it was one of the earliest arcade games to feature a marketable character. Inspired by a pizza missing a slice, the little yellow protagonist became a pop culture phenomenon and inspired merchandise, an animated series and even a Top 10 song.

From Jumpman to Mario

Nintendo home console, and the company as a whole, struggled financially in the late 1970s. However, two significant events occurred in 1979 that helped the company reverse its fortunes in the electronics market. First, Nintendo opened its American subsidiary in New York City in 1979 and began developing arcade games. Then, the following year, Nintendo released the Game & Watch, one of the first handheld video game systems using technology similar to that in handheld calculators. The success of the Game & Watch, and the introduction of Nintendo early arcade cabinets Sheriff (1979) and Radar Scope (1980) in Japan, pushed the company to invest more resources into electronic games.

After Radar Scope lower-than-expected U.S. sales, though, Nintendo needed a game to place in the unsold cabinets. In 1981, it released the first platform game in which the main character could jump as they made their way up the level. The game and characters were designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and replaced the hardware in unused Radar Scope cabinets.

Jumpman, as the character was called at the time, climbed ladders and jumped over barrels thrown by a giant gorilla to save the damsel in distress, Pauline. What came to be known as Donkey Kong was also groundbreaking because it featured cutscenes, or non-interactive narrative scenes, that helped to advance the game story.

Donkey Kong was groundbreaking because it featured cutscenes, or non-interactive narrative scenes, that helped to advance the game story and also introduced the world to Jumpman, who became the world-famous Mario. (Photo: Nintendo)

Donkey Kong not only went on to become one of the bestselling arcade games of all time, but when Jumpman was renamed Mario—after the warehouse landlord of Nintendo Washington state headquarters—Nintendo suddenly had found its mascot. The Donkey Kong spinoff Mario Bros. was released in arcades in July 1983, introducing the world to Mario brother Luigi and other now-ubiquitous characters like turtles that were later renamed Koopas.

Less than two weeks after Mario Bros. was released in arcades, Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) was released in Japan. Home consoles maintained their popularity in Japan even as the video game market crashed in the United States in 1983—largely due to the lack of quality control over the games made for consoles like Atari, causing a flood of badly produced games into the market.

One downward tipping point was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a video game based on the blockbuster movie that came out in the summer of 1982. Atari reportedly paid between $20-$25 million for the rights to “E.T.” and accelerated the production schedule from six months to less than six weeks to ensure it was available for the Christmas season. Atari manufactured 4 million “E.T.” cartridges, but 3.5 million were reportedly either unsold or returned by customers. The surplus was infamously buried in New Mexico.

Oversaturation of low-quality games, along with the introduction of home computers and stagnation in video game technology, led to a drop in the video game market from more than $3.2 billion ($10.5 billion in 2025) in sales in 1983 to $100 million ($300 million in 2025) in 1985. Arcades also faced a decline in 1983 and 1984 but soon recovered as new technology entered arcades.

Surviving the market crash

Prior to the mid-1980s market slump, Sega introduced the Convert-a-Game system in 1981, which allowed for easier conversion of the game software in arcade cabinets, so that players could enjoy new releases without changing entire cabinets. The Nintendo VS. system used this hardware when it debuted in arcades in 1984, introducing the Famicom system to the U.S. market as Nintendo developed the console for the North American market. Games like Tennis and Excitebike debuted on the VS. system as Nintendo decided which games would be available for the U.S. launch.

After the dramatic video game market crash, Nintendo was aware of how retailers and consumers perceived video games, so it marketed the system as a toy rather than a game. Originally titled Advanced Video System, Nintendo altered the console design to feature neutral gray and black and altered the system from top-loading one to a front-loading insertion system similar to a VCR, which made it distinct from earlier consoles like the Atari 2600.

To further separate the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the company heavily promoted optional accessories. The Beam Gun returned as a light gun, now named Zapper, and the Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.) was added to further sell the NES as an advanced electronic entertainment system rather than a video game console. R.O.B. was short lived, but NES went on to revitalize the home console industry. Gail Tilden, advertising manager for Nintendo of America and one of the early female executives in the video game industry, coined the terms "Game Paks" for the cartridges and console for the "Control Deck," helping to separate it linguistically from the earlier industry.

Originally titled Advanced Video System, Nintendo altered the console design to feature neutral gray and black and altered the system from top-loading one to a front-loading insertion system similar to a VCR, which made it distinct from earlier consoles like the Atari 2600. (Photo: Evan-Amos/Wikimedia Commons)

The consistent figure in Nintendo eventual domination of the video game industry in the 1980s was Mario. Miyamoto had envisioned Mario as Nintendo “go-to” character for various games, leading Mario to become a multimedia star—the video game industry Mickey Mouse. Mario has been featured in more than 200 games as well as various TV series, comics and films, including a blockbuster animated film in 2023 with a sequel scheduled for release in 2026.

Super Mario Bros. advanced game development and was ultimately the perfect game to introduce players to the NES and the company star. The first level, World 1-1, became a template for all future games, acting as a tutorial for players familiarizing themselves with the game controls and new system. The game has sold more than 58 million copies to date across several Nintendo platforms.

Super for Nintendo

Nintendo rise has not always been without controversy, as video games have consistently faced criticism for perceived addiction among young players and the content of games. Nintendo as a business has also faced claims in the North American market of monopolistic practices. To avoid the oversaturation of variable-quality games, Nintendo required approval of games and the NES included a chip in the console that essentially locked out unlicensed games. Although this gave Nintendo oversight of game stock, it also limited outside innovation.

Nintendo success also gave the company tremendous power over retailers, blocking out other consoles through threats to remove its stock if retailers like Walmart granted space to other consoles. The company dominance further extended to the portable game market with the introduction of the Game Boy in April 1989, which included one of the best-selling games of all time, Tetris.

Nintendo has weathered competition throughout its history, ultimately ceding some market share, but survived on the strength of Mario and its engaging library of games. Sega initiated the console wars that dominated the early 1990s video game market when it released the Genesis in North America in the summer of 1989. Sega struggled initially when the Genesis, which was named Mega Drive in Japan, was released about the same time as Super Mario Bros. 3.

The Nintendo Game Boy, released in April 1989, included one of the best-selling games of all time, Tetris. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

The competition heated up after Sega, following Nintendo approach, introduced its own mascot and go-to character, Sonic the Hedgehog, in 1991, through the eponymous platform game. Nintendo also launched its Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) the same year as the fourth generation of consoles introduced 16-bit technology to the market.

Sega hired Tom Kalinske, who made his name launching Flintstone Vitamins and worked with Mattel to revitalize Barbie, to battle Nintendo head on. He positioned the Genesis as the cooler system, targeting high school and college gamers rather than younger children. Sega in-your-face marketing also included targeting retailers who refused to cede space to a Nintendo competitor. The company launched a Sega store in Bentonville, Arkansas, Walmart headquarters, and an advertising strategy that included billboards on local highways to force Walmart to relent and give shelf space to Sega.

Ultimately, the competition from Sega—which for a short time won the majority of market share, partly because Sega leveraged controversy to market more mature and violent games like Mortal Kombat—pushed Nintendo to secure its niche as a family game maker while continuing to embrace new technology. This led to Sega downfall.

Kalinske had negotiated two separate opportunities for Sega to advance that Sega of Japan, which had a contentious relationship with the brasher Sega of America under Kalinske leadership, rejected. The first opportunity was with Silicon Graphics to create a more advanced graphic chip, and the second opportunity was with Sony to develop a new disc-based 3-D system. After Sega of Japan rejected these opportunities, Silicon Graphics partnered with Nintendo on the Nintendo 64 system while Sony went ahead and developed its own system, the Playstation. Both systems far outsold Sega next generation system, Sega Saturn, with Playstation becoming the best-selling console of all time after its release in 1994, only later surpassed by Playstation 2.

Meanwhile, Super Mario 64 introduced a 3-D world that Mario could explore, and he continued to star in some of the most popular video game series of all time, including Mario Kart, Mario Party and dozens of sports games including Mario Tennis and Mario Golf. Nintendo portable systems continued to evolve, adding color, dual screens and 3-D graphics over time, and following the Nintendo 64 with the disc-based Gamecube and then the interactive Wii. The portable and console systems combined in 2017 when the hybrid Switch was released, allowing both portable play and television docking.

Mario continues to be at the center of everything Nintendo does, and Mario Kart was the featured game when the Switch 2 launched in summer 2025. Now, fans of the plumber can also engage with him and the other members of the Nintendo Universe at Super Nintendo World, a themed land at Universal Studios theme parks, the latest of which opened in Florida in May 2025. Even after over four decades, Mario continues to be super for Nintendo.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Building a digital home for Arapaho, one sentence at a time

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:54:34 +0000

Building a digital home for Arapaho, one sentence at a time Rachel Sauer Mon, 10/13/2025 - 09:54

Cody DeBos

�Ͼ�Ʒ�� linguistics scholar Andrew Cowell helps Arapaho stories find new life online

The Arapaho words beteen, meaning “sacred,” and beteneyooo, “one body,” have a special connection for those who speak the language. Their linguistic similarity isn’t a coincidence.

Andrew Cowell, a �Ͼ�Ʒ�� professor of linguistics and faculty director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies (CNAIS), says the Arapaho see it as a lesson encoded in the language. “It indicates that the body is sacred and therefore we have to protect it,” he says.

Such examples of cultural knowledge don’t always survive translation. That exactly why Cowell belief in the importance of preserving Indigenous languages led him to redirect the entire trajectory of his career.

�Ͼ�Ʒ�� linguist Andrew Cowell, faculty director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies (CNAIS), has partnered with a host of collaborators including CU students, community partners and native speakers to build digital tools to protect and revitalize the Arapaho language.

It also why, for the past two decades, he and a host of collaborators including �Ͼ�Ʒ�� students, community partners and native speakers, have been building digital tools to protect and revitalize the Arapaho language.

Cowell didn’t originally come to �Ͼ�Ʒ�� to work on Arapaho, but he has long been curious about Indigenous languages, in part thanks to his personal connection to Native Hawaiian culture through his wife.

“Arapaho was the native language of Boulder, so when I got hired at CU I decided, well, I’ll look into Arapaho,” he recalls. “I started looking into Arapaho more and more and doing more work on the side and eventually decided to switch departments into linguistics so I could focus all my energy on indigenous languages.”

Two databases, one goal

Today, Cowell work on Arapaho takes two forms: one, an online lexical database; the other, an unpublished, in-depth text database of natural language conversation and narratives.

The lexical database, freely accessible online, functions like a living dictionary. With more than 20,000 entries and a searchable interface, it often used by learners across the Arapaho-speaking world in place of print dictionaries, according to Cowell.

But a larger effort has quietly been taking shape behind the scenes.

The text database, which is not publicly released, contains more than 100,000 sentences of spoken Arapaho. Among them are natural conversations and stories recorded over decades.

“At this point, I’ve got over a hundred thousand sentences of natural speaking that I have not only recorded, but also transcribed into written Arapaho, translated into English, and then it has linguistic analysis attached as well,” Cowell explains.

The database is the backbone of several major projects, all with the goal of making learning Arapaho more accessible and preserving it for future generations. One effort is a student grammar dictionary that focuses on the most useful and common words.

“We’ve gotten a list of the frequency of all the nouns in the language and all the verbs," Cowell says. "We ranked those, and it allowed us to produce a really small student dictionary where we only included words that occurred around 40 times or more.

“It means (students) don’t have to flip through rare and uncommon words they’re unlikely to be really interested in as initial learners.”

A pathway for new learners

Beyond the student dictionary, Cowell and his team are working on developing a scaled curriculum for teaching Arapaho. It guides learners from basics to more complex concepts across sequential levels based on real-world language use patterns.

Young Arapaho dancers (Photo courtesy the Wind River Casino)

“We’ve developed 44 steps of knowledge, and even within that there's 23a and 23b and so forth,” he says. “It all based on looking at the text we've collected and looking at the frequency of certain kinds of grammatical features that occur.”

Unlike French or Spanish, Arapaho wasn’t historically taught in a classroom but passed down through families at home. Cowell team has had to build an instructional framework from the ground up.

“With Arapaho, no one really ever tried to teach it as a second language. Now we’re trying to learn it and teach it, and the databases have allowed us to really produce that scaled curriculum,” Cowell says.

Generations of trust

Ensuring that his work isn’t just academic has been a priority for Cowell since the start. The database project is built on decades of trust between himself and the Arapaho community.

“The one thing Native American communities have often had problems with in the past is someone comes in, does their research, then disappears. Then the community is left wondering what they are getting out of it. In some cases, nothing,” Cowell says. “I worked hard to establish that I really want to learn the language and ensure my work is something that will feed back into the community and help out.”

That commitment has led to rich partnerships, sometimes spanning generations.

“We’re close to having 100 different native speakers represented in our data. At this point we’ve got grandparents and now their kids are working on it,” Cowell says.

A worthy effort

From a linguist perspective, Cowell explains, Indigenous languages expand our understanding of what language, and indeed human cognition, can do.

“We’re close to having 100 different native speakers represented in our data. At this point we’ve got grandparents and now their kids are working on it.”

“There are many cases in the history of linguistics where people have made a claim like ‘no language could possibly do this,’ and then someone goes to the Amazon and discovers a language that does it,” he says.

More importantly, the motivating force that has kept Cowell working for over twenty years comes from the Arapaho speakers themselves.

He says, “In my experience, Native American communities are very invested in their language. They see it as really crucial, central to their identity.”

That why the full text database hasn’t been released publicly, especially with growing concerns about how the data might be used or exploited by artificial intelligence. Still, Cowell and his team are taking steps toward broader access.

A grant from the National Science Foundation will support the release of 5,000 carefully selected sentences from the text database for public use. The snippets, which have been approved by native Arapaho speakers, will be available online with additional computational linguistic labeling.

As for Cowell, he says that even after 20 years, he never tires of seeing the work evolve. He hopes it shows CU students what possible when you follow your curiosity.

“You never know where you’re going to end up and what results are going to come out of something. You just have to trust that research is going to turn out to be interesting. You can’t necessarily predict when or where.”

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�Ͼ�Ʒ�� linguistics scholar Andrew Cowell helps Arapaho stories find new life online.

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Top image: "Two Riders Leading Horses" by Arapaho artist Frank Henderson, ca. 1882 (Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

And the heavyweight champion of TV is ... HBO!

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 23:11:23 +0000

And the heavyweight champion of TV is ... HBO! Rachel Sauer Thu, 10/02/2025 - 17:11

Jared Bahir Browsh

Fifty years after the Thrilla in Manila bout launched HBO as a national broadcasting powerhouse, the network continues to shape modern viewing and entertainment

The Thrilla in Manila, fought 50 years ago on Sept. 30, 1975, in Quezon City, Philippines, was the third bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier and is considered by many as one of the best, most brutal fights in boxing history. It also marked a new era in sports media as the first fight broadcast nationally through Home Box Office (HBO).

Television audiences had been limited in what sports they could watch since the 1930s. Broadcast networks had to fit sports in with their other programming, including news and scripted shows, so audiences that wanted to watch at home were limited to regional offerings or national games of the week. In 1948, a fight between Joe Louis and Joe Walcott was broadcast in theaters through closed-circuit television. Theaters were connected through private telephone or coaxial cable, and viewers bought tickets to see the bout projected from a special receiver.

Closed-circuit broadcasts of boxing matches and other sports events peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, earning millions of dollars for event promoters. Ali fights in this era were among the most popular closed-circuit events, but others, like the Indianapolis 500, also drew large audiences of sports fans to movie theaters. The famed Rumble in the Jungle between Ali and George Foreman earned $60 million in theater admission in the United States, with fans paying $20 ($130 today) to watch the event live as it occurred across the world in the former Zaire.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

The same year as the Louis-Walcott fight, cable television debuted, connecting rural homes too remote to receive a television signal over an antenna. Northeastern Pennsylvania was a test ground for this form of television, since it was close enough to New York City and Philadelphia to pick up broadcast signals with a strong antenna atop a building or a mountain, then connect households through cable. Later, cities in eastern Pennsylvania like Wilkes-Barre and Allentown were among the first whose residents subscribed to paid cable television outside of major cities like New York.

Businessman Charles Dolan was granted a franchise permit to build the first cable system, Sterling Manhattan Cable, in 1965, obtaining financial backing from Time-Life. A lack of quality programming beyond some events in Madison Square Garden hampered the growth of the system, which cost millions of dollars to install but only attracted a few hundred customers in the city. In 1971, during a cruise to France, Dolan conceived of a network that could be leased to other cable systems, which would air unedited films without advertising and was funded by subscriber costs, tentatively named the “Green Channel.”

Along with convincing Time-Life that this was a viable business, Dolan also had to navigate Federal Communications Commission (FCC) scrutiny, which had limited the programs that could be broadcast on cable due to non-duplications rules and other regulations focused on supporting the broadcast networks. Also, consistent lobbying from movie theater chains and broadcasters hampered cable companies, since customers were bombarded with messages that cable was a threat to both the movie business and to free over-the-air content.

Undeterred, Dolan convinced Time-Life to support the Green Channel, which it did after the FCC gave preemptive authorization to launch a paid television service. Dolan and his Time-Life partners originally planned to launch through the Teleservice cable system in Allentown, but after an agreement to broadcast Philadelphia 76ers games collapsed, they launched through the same service 65 miles north in Wilkes Barre to avoid NBA blackouts. Wilkes-Barre was considered New York Knicks territory, and the network had the right to broadcast Knicks games through its agreement with Madison Square Garden. During this time, Dolan and Time-Life also selected a placeholder name for the network, Home Box Office, as they prepared to launch in 1972. The network was soon made available throughout the northeastern United States by relaying microwaves along towers across the region; some of the earliest programming included movies and New York Rangers hockey.

The following year, Home Box Office, Inc., was spun off from Sterling Communications, with Time-Life increasing its equity in the company. Dolan stepped down as CEO of Home Box Office and Sterling after disagreements with Time-Life, accepting a buyout that enabled him to expand his cable service across Long Island. Time-Life had a tentative agreement with Warner Communications to buy HBO, but ultimately that deal fell through. Time-Life later took over Sterling Communications, but the service continued to struggle, ending in 1973 with fewer than 20,000 subscribers and a high turnover rate as customers found the programming repetitive.

The Thrilla in Manila bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier marked a new era in sports media as the first fight broadcast nationally through Home Box Office (HBO).

The turning point for HBO came in 1975, when executives made a deal with RCA Americom Communications, a satellite communication company, to relay the HBO signal nationally through UA-Columbia Cablevision. UA-Columbia was a joint venture with United Artists that later took over the entire cable service from Columbia and partnered with Madison Square Garden to form Madison Square Garden Sports Network in 1977, changing its name to USA Network in 1980.

Sports = audience

The partnership between HBO and UA-Columbia, and later the formation of what would become USA Network, showed that even early cable service providers and networks understood live sports would attract audiences. This was confirmed when HBO first transmitted its programming by satellite, debuting the now national network through what is considered by many the greatest boxing match in the sport history. Between 1973 and 1980, HBO grew from a regional cable network to a national one, increasing subscribers from 8,000 in the northeast at the start of 1973 to more than 3 million nationally in that seven-year period. HBO model was also replicated in local markets through networks like the Z Channel in Los Angeles, which launched in 1974, and Prism in Philadelphia, launched in 1976.

Satellite transmission led to the accelerated growth of cable, with several networks launching in the second half of the 1970s. WTCG became the first superstation in 1976 after Ted Turner learned of the success of the Thrilla in Manila broadcast. He had received approval to buy the Atlanta station six years earlier, and on Dec. 17, 1976, WTCG became the first local station to be retransmitted nationally. The station obtained the rights to broadcast Atlanta Braves baseball games and Atlanta Hawks basketball games—Turner bought the teams in 1976 and 1977, respectively—so when WTCG was renamed WTBS in 1979 and went national, so did the broadcasts for both teams.

The success of WTCG/WTBS led Turner to launch Cable Network News, the first 24-hour news network, in 1980. He launched several other networks through the 1980s and 1990s, including Turner Network Television (TNT) in 1988, Cartoon Network in 1992 and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 1994, helping him become the first cable magnate and a billionaire before selling Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner in 1996—placing TBS and Turner other holdings under the same umbrella as HBO.

Competition in sports programming

Boxing had been a cornerstone of HBO programming since 1973, when the George Foreman upset of Joe Frazier was made famous by Howard Cosell calling “Down Goes Frazier!” HBO also broadcast the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974 before going national. Many credit “HBO World Championship Boxing” for the sport continued growth in the 1970s through the 1990s, even after Ali retired in 1981. The network also launched “Inside the NFL” in 1977, the first league-branded analysis show on premium cable, which was followed by the Major League Baseball-branded “Race for the Pennant” the following year. HBO aired Wimbledon matches starting in 1975 and set a standard for investigative sports journalism with “Real Sports with Bryant Gumble,” which ran for 28 years starting in 1995.

HBO was a fixture in boxing for 45 years, airing its last boxing match in 2018 as it shifted network focus away from sports overall due to competition from sports media companies, including those also owned by Warner Bros. Discovery like CBS Sports and TNT.

ESPN is another sports media company that emerged from the establishment of regional sports cable networks, including the Madison Square Garden Sports Network. It was originally conceived as a Connecticut sports network before founder Bill Rasmussen learned it would be cheaper to broadcast nationally over satellite from Bristol, Connecticut, than regionally, leading to the first national 24-hour sports network launching in 1979.

The same year, a local Columbus, Ohio, children cable network, Pinwheel, went national—renamed Nickelodeon for its April 1 launch. Warner-Amex owned Nickelodeon and launched MTV two years later in 1981, three years after HBO music video-focused “Video Jukebox” premiered.

Expanding cable

Cable growth was still limited through the early 1980s, with many municipalities blocking expansion to protect their own media. The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 helped create regulations that ensured local stations would be available on cable while also requiring that a portion of cable subscriptions fund public, educational and government (PEG) access channels. As cable spread accelerated, HBO continued to break ground in television programming and larger culture.

The Sopranos (cast pictured) was one of the industry-changing shows that debuted on HBO duringthe late 1990s and early 2000s. (Photo: HBO)

When HBO launched, there were only a handful of comedy clubs in the United States, with only a few venues to see standup comics outside of New York or Los Angeles. On broadcast television, standup comedy was limited to five-minute sets on late-night and variety shows. HBO comedy specials changed the industry when comedian Robert Klein debuted on the network in 1975. HBO helped legendary comedians like George Carlin become stars, while providing viewers exposure to future generations of comedians by creating standup comedy shows like Def Comedy Jam. Other networks and platforms like Comedy Central and Netflix followed this lead and expanded their program offerings through standup programs and specials.

One of the draws of these specials was that they were uncensored. HBO and its sister network Cinemax, which launched in 1980, were unique because they aired uncut theatrical films and adult programming. As HBO spread, advocacy groups tried to block the network in some states, due to what they felt was obscene content. Utah passed several laws to try to block HBO, but ultimately, as a premium network that required a subscription, it was not subject to broadcast obscenity laws and was protected by the First Amendment.

HBO was also a pioneer in unscripted programming, becoming one of the top producers of documentary films and series. From concert films to true crime, the breadth of unscripted programming became an inspiration for reality programming across television and helped advance documentary filmmaking. HBO now releases a documentary film or series nearly every month and helped create a template for documentaries, especially those focused on sports or culture.

As other premium and cable networks encroached on HBO programming, the network stayed ahead of the pack and produced its own scripted programming in the early 1980s—including Not Necessarily the News, a satirical news program that inspired series like The Daily Show and HBO own Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

One of the true turning points for HBO and the sitcom genre was the debut of The Larry Sanders Show in 1992. The network saw a number of the comedians that launched their careers through HBO—including Jerry Seinfeld and Roseanne Barr—receive their own shows, so HBO worked with Garry Shandling to create the show based on Shandling life. The single-camera, behind-the-scenes, laugh track–free show inspired similar series like 30 Rock, The Office and HBO Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The true turning point

The true turning point for HBO came in the late 1990s, when the network helped launch what many consider the age of prestige television. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, HBO debuted a string of industry-changing shows including Oz, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, and The Wire, which inspired other networks to focus on higher-quality scripted programming like The Shield on FX and Mad Men on AMC.

During this time, HBO also launched the first video-on-demand service in 2001 through cable providers, initiating a shift away from appointment television and toward the current streaming environment, which HBO helped expand by launching HBO Go in 2010. Although Netflix launched its streaming service in 2007, HBO Go offered the network original programming and pushed Netflix to do the same; Netflix aired its first original series, House of Cards, in 2013.

HBO Go was supported by a new wave of highly produced series that brought cinematic-level production to television. Shows like Game of Thrones and Westworld helped support the continued growth of cinematic sensibilities influencing television production. Even with increased competition from streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu, HBO continues to be an industry leader despite questions regarding parent company Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) future. HBO Max is the streaming home for the corporation offering HBO programming along with news (CNN), sports (Turner/CBS) and scripted and unscripted programming from across WBD many brands.

HBO growth from a small regional subscription network to the standard bearer of television internationally can be traced to the network national debut. That its first national broadcast happened to be one of the greatest boxing matches in the sport history is fitting, considering HBO impact on modern television.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Fifty years after the Thrilla in Manila bout launched HBO as a national broadcasting powerhouse, the network continues to shape modern viewing and entertainment.

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Long live the King in modern music

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:51:19 +0000

Long live the King in modern music Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/30/2025 - 18:51

Rachel Sauer

In what would have been B.B. King 100^th birthday month, �Ͼ�Ʒ�� music scholar Shawn O’Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025

B.B. King was born to sharecroppers on a cotton plantation in Leflore County, Mississippi, and began his musical career in the church choir, teaching himself to play guitar while listening to the “King Biscuit Time” radio show.

Sabrina Carpenter was born in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and began posting videos of herself singing Adele and Christina Aguilera songs on YouTube around age 10. As a teenager, she starred in the Disney Channel series “Girl Meets World.”

Culturally and musically, they’re about as different as two artists can be. But if the roots of rock ‘n’ roll and even pop grow from blues—which they do—then it should be possible to hear B.B. King and other legends of blues in the sly pop confections of Sabrina Carpenter.

Shawn O'Neal is a �Ͼ�Ʒ�� assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and Center for African and African American Studies executive committee member.

So, Shawn O’Neal, a �Ͼ�Ʒ�� musicologist and assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies, cues up Carpenter song “Manchild,” currently No. 6 on the Billboard Top 100: “Right away, the first thing I hear is that call and response of where she singing something and then answering her own question or statement back to herself,” he notes. “Call and response is such a foundation of blues music—whether Sabrina Carpenter knows that or thinks about it, or even has to, she got that from somewhere.”

Further, he asks, who were some of the first to sing about taking care of business—working all day, making a home at night—while a no-good partner is off catting around? The women of blues.

“They were the first to talk about sexuality, to talk about the issues they were having with their partners, even sometimes to talk about the fact that they were having love interests of the same sex,” O’Neal says. “All of those tropes are very defined in (Carpenter) music, and then there just that drumbeat, that very four-on-the-floor beat that a hallmark of blues. I think you could take that Sabrina Carpenter song and turn it into a blues song very easily.”

And it not just Carpenter. Even on current Top 40 lists that seem to owe more to computers and electronics than to the sawdust floors of Delta juke joints, blues touchpoints are audible. B.B. King, who died in May 2015 but would have turned 100 this month, and other legends of blues live in the music of 2025.

“B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey—I hear them in all this pop music,” O’Neal says. “I can’t not hear it, because it there; it in the DNA.”

‘What they call rock ‘n’ roll’

In 1957, a Hearst interviewer asked rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Fats Domino, “Fats, how did this rock ‘n’ roll all get started, anyway?” and Domino replied, “Well, what they call rock ’n’ roll now is rhythm and blues. I’ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans.”

It was an acknowledgment that what felt revolutionary and sonically groundbreaking was actually a long time coming—the latest brick in a long- and well-established foundation.

It a direct lineage, O’Neal says: Pop grew from rock ‘n’ roll; rock grew from blues, jazz and gospel; which grew from spirituals and field hollers; and those were first-generation descendants of African musical and narrative traditions brought to North America by enslaved people.

“Spirituals were sung in the cotton fields on the plantations,” O’Neal explains. “People were creating this music as subliminal communication, and the enslavement masters didn’t understand what they were talking about. They had to create a new language, and so much of it was speaking to spirituality—save us, help us, let me find some solace. It comes from pain and struggle and being completely removed from who you are, and we can sugarcoat it and syrup it up, but foundationally that where American music is coming from.”

Though the roots of American music are twisting and complex—and also woven of European folk and classical traditions—there a through line of African American musical tradition, O’Neal says. Gospel evolved from spirituals and give birth to its lyrically secular offspring of blues, which birthed jazz, rock and pop, as well as the direct descendants that are rap and hip-hop.

�Ͼ�Ʒ�� music scholar Shawn O'Neal notes that blues legends like B.B. King stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe (pictured above), Lead Belly and Robert Johnson. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The earliest blues artists began developing a distinctive sound that became known for 12-bar chord progressions—a form based on the I, IV and V chords in a musical key—that are fundamental to the blues genre and are prominent in rock ‘n’ roll, O’Neal says. Classic blues music also followed a pattern of one line being repeated four times in a verse, which 20th-century artists evolved the AAB pattern that became the blues standard: a three-line verse structure in blues music where the first line (A) is repeated, and the third line (B) offers a conclusion or response, often using a "question-question-answer" pattern within a 12-bar blues progression.

Blues legends like B.B. King, who stood on the shoulders of musical giants such as Lead Belly and Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, experimented with the foundational elements of blues, which also included the “walking bass” rhythms and pitch-flattened “blue notes,” and broadened the sound and scope of the genre. Rock and pop, as well as myriad blues subgenres, were natural progressions, O’Neal says.

Drenched in the blues

Even now, as cross-pollinated and subdivided as music is, O’Neal says, listeners hear the blues regardless of whether they recognize it: “For example, when you think about the foundations of electronic music or EDM, we’re talking about house music, and those DJs were originally playing rhythm and blues records. And in pop, you hear that foundation of disco, and they were also playing soul and rhythm and blues in the clubs.

“None of this music being played today was conjured out of thin air; it based on musical traditions that go back 100, 200 years.”

He adds that in hip-hop culture, B.B. King has been sampled from the earliest days of the genre “because those were the records in our parents’ record collections. And obviously it never been just Black artists who’ve sampled and built on the blues. If you start at a place like Led Zeppelin, they obviously were heavily influenced by B.B. King and just drenched in blues, Jimmy Page especially. You take songs like ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ or ‘The Song Remains the Same’ and slow them down to that really draggy riff—that blues.”

When O’Neal has taught students to hear these influences in Reiland Rabaka's Introduction to Hip Hop Studies classes and Critical Survey of African American music, “they come up to me after almost every class saying, ‘I never knew that was in there.’”

The challenge, he says, is respecting the artistic quest for newness and innovation while acknowledging and honoring the foundation on which it lives.

“As an artist, you have to understand that even if you want to think it your own original song, it still based off things that already happened,” says O’Neal, who also is a renowned DJ and musician. “Taylor Swift? Well, that Motown, that what she doing—three chords, simple progressions, prominent melodies, emotional lyrics. Whether artists now want to acknowledge it or not, the sounds they’re playing started a long time ago.”

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In what would have been B.B. King 100th birthday month, �Ͼ�Ʒ�� music scholar Shawn O’Neal considers how the legends of blues can be heard in even the fizziest pop of 2025.

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Top image: B.B. King playing at the University of Hamburg in November 1971. (Photo: Heinrich Klaffs/Wikimedia Commons)

Charting the rise and fall of great sea powers

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 17:29:31 +0000

Charting the rise and fall of great sea powers Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/18/2025 - 11:29

Bradley Worrell

CU alum book examines how the fate of the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States as economic and political powers has been deeply intertwined with their ability to project power via the seas

Colin Flint, a �Ͼ�Ʒ�� PhD geography graduate and professor of political geography at Utah State University, researches the rise and fall of great world powers.

It a topic beyond simple academic interest to Flint, who was born in 1965 and raised in England during a period of seismic change in the country.

“At the time, Britain was still struggling to figure out that it wasn’t the world greatest power anymore, so my socialization and political coming of age was in a declined power,” he says. Additionally, Flint says being raised in the busy ferry port of Dover made a powerful impression on him by highlighting the country long history as a maritime nation.

Colin Flint, a �Ͼ�Ʒ�� PhD geography graduate, researches the rise and fall of great world powers.

“Dover definitely has influenced me, being so close to the water,” he says. “My high school was on a hill overlooking the harbor, which at the time was the busiest ferry port in the world, with ships going back and forth to France and Belgium. So, the notion was very much rooted in me that Britain drew its power, historically, from the sea.”

At one point, Flint entertained the idea of joining the Royal Navy before setting his career sights on academia. He obtained his bachelor and master degrees in Britain, then pursued his PhD in geography at the �Ͼ�Ʒ�� thanks to fortuitous connections between his undergrad mentor and �Ͼ�Ʒ�� Department of Geography Professor John O’Loughlin.

“I moved to United States of America in 1990 to attend university, and the literature at the time and discussions were all very declinist. It was very much, ‘America has gone down the tubes,’” he says. “Broadly speaking, I moved from a declined power into a declining power, or so I thought at the time.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Flint says the idea of America as a declining power was largely replaced with a triumphalist narrative that saw the U.S. as the world only remaining superpower.

Ideas about what makes a country an economic and political superpower—and how a country can lose its status as a hegemonic power—had been percolating in Flint brain for years when he recently published his book Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower. The book specifically looks at the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States for context on how the countries used sea power to project their economic and political influence across the globe.

Flint spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about his book, while also offering insights on how current events are shaping the outlook for the United States and the world. His answers have been edited for clarity and condensed.

Question: What is the context for your book title: Near and Far Waters?

Flint: There are legal terms about coasts and the exclusive economic zone around the country coastlines, but I’m not using it in that way. I’m thinking about an area of ocean in which a country has interest and influence over and off its coastline.

"Near and Far Waters" by �Ͼ�Ʒ�� alumnus Colin Flint focuses on the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States for context on how the countries used sea power to project their economic and political influence across the globe.

That is an important piece of ocean for a country because there resource exploitation, but it also a matter of security. If a country wants to protect itself from potential invasion, it needs to control those waters off its coastline—it near waters.

Some countries, once they’ve established control of their near waters, have the ability and desire to project beyond that, across the oceans into what would then become its far waters. If you think about Great Britain in the context of the British Empire, once it fought off European threats to its coastline—its near waters—it was then able to develop the sea power to establish its empire. It was in African far waters, it was in Indian far waters, in Middle East far waters and so on.

Another good example of this would be how the United States of America, over the course of history, pushed other countries out of its near waters. The Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are good examples, where Spanish and British influence were ended over the 1800s and 1900s. And then by establishing control through annexation of Hawaii and the purchase of Alaska, America developed its Pacific near waters, too, which it expanded upon through the course of World War II, pushing the Japanese back and establishing bases in Okinawa, Japan; the Philippines; and Guam, etc.

Question: One of your chapters is titled ‘No Island is an Island.’ What do you mean by that?

Flint: I was talking about how the projection of sea power requires the control of islands. Often, the geopolitical goal and benefit of controlling an island is not the island itself—it how it enables projection of power further, or how it hinders other countries’ projection of power by being near sea lines of communication that you can have a base to try and disrupt. For example, when Hawaii became part of the United States, it allowed the U.S. to project power across the Pacific. Again, it not the island itself—it the projection of power across an ocean.

Projecting sea power is about more than just having a strong navy.

Question: If one country far waters extend into the near waters of another country, that would seem to be a recipe for conflict, would it not?

Flint: That is the kicker, of course, that a sea power far waters are another country near waters. And it has historically led to conflicts and even wars. It always involved violence—and not just between great powers and lesser powers, but also violence against the people living on islands or in coastal lands where sea powers are looking to establish dominance and exploit resources.

Question: China has been rapidly expanding its navy in recent years. Is it simply beefing up its sea forces to protect its near waters, or is it looking to supplant the U.S. as the dominant sea power? Or are there other motives at play?

Flint: You often see in newspaper articles written in the United States and maybe other Western countries that China has the biggest navy in the world. This always makes me laugh because, yes, it got hundreds and hundreds of tiny little coastal defense vessels, but even now that it has two aircraft carriers, it does not have the ability to project power like the United States of America, which has 11 carrier groups. So, I think that should always be recognized.

The other sort of trope that often wielded out there, which I think we need to question, is: The West is worried about China developing a navy, because it will allow China to disrupt trade networks. Well, wait a minute. China is very dependent on imports, especially of fuel or energy. Additionally, it is the world largest trading economy, and it worried about the robustness of its domestic economy. They cannot maintain their economic growth based purely on their domestic market, so they need to have a global economic presence for markets and for securing inputs into their economy.

Putting those two things together, it makes no sense why China would want to disrupt global trade. In fact, the country reaction to President Trump sanctions tells us that the last thing China wants is global trade disrupted. They’re very worried about the fragility of their own economy and whether that leads to social unrest, etc. The flip side of that is how the West could really hurt China by blocking those trade routes to prevent energy imports into China and exports.

China is definitely trying to grow its navy. I think what makes it so interesting is its simultaneous attempt to have a navy that can defend its near waters while perhaps preventing the operation of the United States in its far waters. To what extent China is attempting to establish a presence in its far waters is less clear.

"A sea power far waters are another country near waters. And it has historically led to conflicts and even wars," notes scholar Colin Flint. ("Naval Battle of 1812," Painting, Oil on Canvas; By Rodolfo Claudus; 1962/U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)

Question: From your book, it seems like you have some serious concerns about the potential for a serious conflict arising from disputes over near and far waters?

Flint: In fact, I’ve never been so concerned or worried in my career, to be honest with you. When I started teaching my class on political geography many moons ago, let say in the mid-1990s, I used to start off with some structural model of global political change, which essentially says, we have cycles of war and peace, for the want of a better term.

And I asked my students to try and get them engaged: ‘Picture yourself in 2025. What are you going to be doing?’ It was staggering to me how many of them believed that they would be millionaires and already retired (laughs).

The point of that was that the model I was using predicted another period of global war, starting in 2025. I don’t do that exercise anymore, because it isn’t funny; it really quite serious. So yes, the risk of war is high, and I think it could emerge in a number of different places. One focus is on the South China Sea, the near waters of China, as that is clearly a potential flashpoint. Taiwan is the obvious focal point of what that conflict would look like.

I also wonder about potential flashpoints of conflict in Chinese far waters—and that could include the Arctic and the Northern Atlantic, because another factor that has to be considered is global climate change and the increasing possibility of a trade route through the North Pole, which would cut trade times from China into European markets considerably. Those waters represent U.S. near waters, so …

Question: Do you envision any sort of viable alternatives to a conflict between world powers over near and far waters, especially in today environment?

Flint: My motivation with the book was with an eye to waving some sort of flag about how to think about peace rather than war. Most of our lenses are national lenses. If we keep on this pattern of a national lens, then I see a strong likelihood to repeat these cycles of near and far water sea powers, which have always involved a period of global war.

We need to change that lens. We need to have a global view as to why countries are always seeking far waters, entering other people near waters and why that can lead to conflict.

Today, we’re facing a humanity-scale problem, which is global climate change. Is that the thing that will tell us we need to work together, rather than compete? I’m not saying it is; I’m saying, if I see a glimmer of optimism to your question, that it.

Question: Based upon your research, if a country loses its status as a hegemonic power, can it later recover that status? And, in the context of today world, what might things look like if the U.S. lost its hegemonic status?

Flint: The short answer is no, based upon past history, a country that loses its hegemonic status has not been able to reclaim it once it gone.

But to your second question, it goes back to the question about what China intentions are. In American popular culture, where every sports team has to be No. 1, even if they are eighth in some Mickey Mouse conference, there is this obsession that there has to be a singular winner or champion.

What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t just assume that if the United States declines there will be another emergent dominant power in the world. It quite possible that if the United States declines, what might emerge would be a multipolar world, although I don’t know what that might look like.

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CU alum book examines how the fate of the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States as economic and political powers has been deeply intertwined with their ability to project power via the seas.

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Top image: A squadron of the Royal Navy running down the Channel and An East Indiaman preparing to sail, by artist Samuel Atkins (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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