Kent Worcester

The Politics of the Superhero

This symposium explores the relationship of superheroes to questions of power, ideology, social relations, and political culture. It represents the first time that a political science journal has devoted sustained attention to the superhero genre as it is reflected in the pages of comic books and graphic novels, and on the big screen.

Comics, comics studies, and political science

Many readers look to comics and cartoons for entertainment, but they can also inform, as well as inspire, controversy and even acts of political violence, as the Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo cases demonstrate. Indeed, politics and comics connect and overlap in all sorts of ways. This review essay explores the nexus of politics and comics at a time when a growing number of cartoonists are creating extended works of graphic nonfiction that address serious political and historical themes.

The Meaning and Legacy of the Magna Carta

The six essays of this symposium address different aspects of the meaning and legacy of the Magna Carta—“the Great Charter” in Latin. Although social scientists and legal scholars routinely describe the Magna Carta as foundational for concepts of justice and liberty, the charter itself is rarely assigned in political science classes or scrutinized by political theorists. The aim of the symposium is twofold: first, to affirm the documents historical rootedness and intellectual richness, and, second, to explore the ways in which the Magna Cartas text and reputation have informed the development of common law and modern politics. The Magna Carta was the product of times very different from our own, yet it continues to be cited by jurists and human rights activists around the globe. This symposium makes the case for why political scientists should take an interest in the Magna Carta, not just as a cultural icon, but as a durable political text.

Rethinking Political Science: An Interview with Mark Kesselman

Mark Kesselman is a prominent member of the generation of political scientists who attended college in the 1950s and whose lives and careers were fundamentally transformed by the upheavals of the 1960s. He is best known for his path-breaking work on local politics in France, for his textbooks on European, US, and comparative politics, and for his research and teaching on social democracy and welfare states in Western Europe. A graduate of Cornell and the University of Chicago, Mark Kesselman taught at Columbia University from 1964 until his retirement in 2006. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Bordeaux, the University of Paris-VIII, the University of Lille-II, New York University, and the University of MassachusettsAmherst. His research has received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Education, and other organizations. His first book, The Ambiguous Consensus: A Study of Local Government in France (1967), revitalized the study of local politics in France. His 1973 World Politics article on “Order or Movement? The Literature of Political Development as Ideology” helped spark debate across the discipline over mainstream development theory, particularly as articulated by Samuel Huntington in Political Order in Changing Societies (1968). Much of his subsequent writing has focused on organized labor, leftist parties, and social movements in Europe. A founding member of the Caucus for a New Political Science, Mark Kesselman’s long and distinguished career is intertwined with the larger history of a critically minded political science. The following interview combines four conversations that were held in 2006 and 2007. The transcript was taped and transcribed by Kent Worcester, and edited by both participants.