In this week’s lecture and seminar, we had Prof. Chris Gavaler from Washington and Lee University to talk about the origins of superheroes. Previously we have read two chapters of his book On the Origin of Superheroes: from the Big Bang to Action Comics No. 1 which talk about the evolution and eugenics implications of the birth of superheroes. Then in his evening lecture, Prof. Gavaler introduced this object by tracing back to the origins of the word “superhero,” the origins of the concept of the superhero, and the political and cultural implications of superhero.
Tag: gender
Last Tuesday in class, we discussed the scientific revolution from the 16th century to the 18th century. Later in the evening, we had Professor Aaron Hanlon talked about the origins of royal society and origins of the novels which also took place in the same period. Prof. Hanlon began his lecture with the discussion on the liberal arts education at Colby. If we look at the distribution of the academic buildings, the sciences buildings are almost on the same side of the school, while the humanities ones are on the other side. This lecture was not the first time when I heard about this history of the distributions of campus buildings. As someone introduced about how women and men used to live on each side of the schools, this distribution seemed to fit with the contemporary anticipations on gender in the mid to late 19th century.