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Pop Culture and Education

Reacting to the Past

A new approach to teaching by Mark Carnes at Barnard College in 1996 led to a collection of historically-based role-playing games being used in college classrooms across the country.

The Marvel Age of Comics

Spider-Man: The My Lai Massacre

The tragic massacre during the Vietnam War is explored alongside Flash Thompson’s failed attempt keep a sacred temple from being bombed when he was drafted and sent to Vietnam.

Green Arrow and His Times

Green Arrow: Racial Profiling

In 2016, writer Benjamin Percy tackled the subject of racial profiling in a multi-issue narrative of Green Arrow in which a floating machine with tentacles targets African Americans in Seattle.

Comic Books and the Real World

Batman: The Theft of the Mona Lisa

The famed painting was not only stolen from the Louvre in 1911 but in a DC Comics storyline featuring Batman in the present and Leonardo da Vinci’s inspiration being kidnapped in the past.