By: Katrina Brown Marvel Studios’ movies are known for their well-rounded characters, intricate storylines, and quick paced action. In 2018, Marvel made waves with their new addition: Black Panther. Black Panther’s powerful cast of men and women of color, along with its tuned-in social commentary easily made it one of 2018’s most celebrated and culturally […]

By: Marlee Jacocks  Freedom or security? Democracies are constantly forced to confront the tension between these two concepts on behalf of their people. Citizens are called to reflect on which is more important to them. What about in a perfect world? In most classic utopias, the state practices isolationism and strictly follows a set of […]

By: Troi Watts While most people would associate the film, Thor: Ragnarok (2017) with apocalyptic themes, the film contains multiple examples of utopias and dystopias. When Thor initially fails to stop Hela, the film’s antagonist, he ends up on the planet of Sakaar. Sakaar is an excellent example of how a society can be both […]

By: Ben Sapet In the 1970s, the United Kingdom felt distinct growing pains as the previous decade’s progressive and loosening cultural norms rubbed against a growing reactionary trend of government conservatism and fierce traditionalist social activists. By 1977, British art-rock group Pink Floyd had snapped. That year, they released Animals, a concept album filled to the […]

By Megan Schillereff, Ball State University In current conversation, the idea of apocalypse and the interconnected idea of the posthuman are usually presented as science fiction or fantasy. Despite its popularity within the fictional universes of both the page and the screen, apocalyptic events have occurred within the course of human history, traceable all the […]

By Kaitlyn Bell, Ball State University       In his study After the End, James Berger says “the post-apocalypse in fiction provides an occasion to go ‘back to basics’ and to reveal what the writer considers to be truly of value” (8).  I believe this is especially true in Bungie’s video game Destiny. The plot […]

By Abigail Gelopulos, Ball State University Evie Covington, the main character of the Warner Bros. apocalyptic television show No Tomorrow, is a nervous perfectionist who lacks the confidence necessary to implement changes in her life that would make her feel more on track to who she wants to be.  Xavier Holliday, her male counterpart, is introduced […]

By Audrey Bowers, Ball State University 2028 – The Change   Nothing can stop me. I’m a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. “Come along Toby,” I say to my dog. My eyes squint to see what this abandoned city might offer me. Toby, my corgi, trails after me through the brick streets of what I […]

by Nick Smith, Ball State University “The world as we know it is gone…. Scarred by endless wars, humanity struggles to survive in the ruins of the old world. Frozen in an everlasting nuclear winter. This is the future. This is the year 1997” (00:01:17-00:01:34). These are among the first words of the 2015 film, […]

by Tynan Drake, Ball State University An erasure poem is a “poem that sculpts itself out of another larger text” in order to commentate on or derive new meaning from the original text (Brewer, “Erasure and Blackout Poems”). Erasure poems are created by taking choice words or phrases from the source text and deleting everything […]