Pop Culture Pulse: Flashback for Election Season 2016 — gender, toys, and politics.
How we play says who we are … and how we vote. The first Barbie was sold in 1959. Pop culture has always reflected on and responded to gender and politics. And more than that — what we play with and how we play helps determine who we are. So what may seem like a happy little diversion in...
Truth Teller Spotlight – Susann Cokal
Aside from her role as the Editorial Director of Broad Street Magazine, Susann Cokal also wears hats as historical novelist, pop-culture essayist, book critic, and professor of creative writing and modern literature at Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to her three published novels, Cokal has published fiction and nonfiction in Electric Literature, Gargoyle, The Cincinnati Review, The Journal, Hayden’s...
From Our Pages: “Making Friends with Midge,” an essay on your best friend and Barbie’s. By Susann Cokal.
“Midge was, as all Mattel’s toys and books and marketing materials identified her, ‘Barbie’s Best Friend’— not simply herself. She never even had an essay written especially for her till now.” Spend some time palling around with Midge, Barbie’s best friend, and Barbie fan/scholar Susann Cokal. Besides being a literary critic, novelist, teacher, and Broad Street‘s editorial...
