[T]he ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die. Hence, to kill or to allow to live constitute the limits of sovereignty, its fundamental attributes. —Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics” In June Tucker Carlson accompanied Donald Trump on a trip to North Korea to meet with the nation’s leader, Kim Jong Un. Ostensibly, the meeting was to ease tensions between the United States and the Democr

"As of Tuesday, Nebraska’s prisons held 5,217 inmates, which is about 160 percent of their design capacity of 3,275" — Omaha World-Herald, August 2017 [1]. I circle the Nebraska State Penitentiary on an icy Friday night. From 13th Street, construction makes entrance impossible. My car, older than I, rumbles and huffs, nearly drowns out the voice of my phone’s navigation system, your destination is on the left, take the next left, you have arrived, you have arrived. Irony reac

Current discussions surrounding cyber bullying or the creation of communities via the World Wide Web are similar to those that occurred around its inception and subsequent exposure to the public. Anonymity, the argument goes, allows for anyone to behave however they wish in a space that is largely unmoderated, and to do so (in most cases) without penalty or physical retribution. In a similar way, such a sphere allows users from disparate physical realities to form and produce

I was in my eighteenth year when the first gulf war started in 1990 (the one that Baudrillard said didn’t actually happen). Except for the odd excursion into the equatorial paradises like Panama and Granada, the United States was not at war from about the time I was born until I became an adult. Sure, there was the Cold War, but that was pretty much thawing by the time I was learning the alphabet. I have learned that I will, on occasion, have some trouble relating to my stude

My affinity for technology—and video games in particular—can be traced back to playing games like DOOM on MS-DOS on the family computer. A few years ago, I thought this childhood memory was cool because I saw it as the beginning of what had been a continuous passion into early adulthood. Now, however, I see it as an example of the first generation of a society that has become technologically dependent. And clearly, this technological attachment is found in our relationship to

A watershed is a geographic feature that divides water into different systems. A watershed also represents the tributaries and gathering ground for a central body of water. As graduate students at the University of Nebraska, we acknowledge the significance of watersheds to the agricultural industry as well as the ecology of the Great Plains region. However and perhaps most popularly, a watershed is known to be a crucial event or occurrence recognized as causing a turning poin