When I was 16, we learned about Australia in school. Here is the extent of the notes I took one day.
American historian, religion, environment, pop culture, the South. Author: The Devil's Music (Harvard, 2018). Prof of Am & Brit Studies, Univ of Oslo. Fulbright alumnus. https://t.co/oGDJUwAhXL
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When I was 16, we learned about Australia in school. Here is the extent of the notes I took one day.
Sen. Mark Warner: Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths? Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Again, I would like to see the data and talk about the data.
The Trump admin and the Epstein files
Google Translate does a pretty decent job with bokmål and nynorsk.
I did a little interview about the problems with students using AI in the humanities and the limits to our response.
The works of Japanese-American artist Miné Okubo (1912-2001). In 1942 government forces took her and her brother first to the Tanforan Race Track camp in San Bruno, California. After that she was sent to the Topaz War Relocation Center, Utah, 1942-1944.
Rockwell Kent on the victims of Nazism, 1943.
This was a great experience! Glad to get a chance to talk about Dobson and his legacy. Thanks @kellyjbaker.bsky.social and @johnbrooks.bsky.social for inviting me.
CFP: American Studies Association of Norway's 2026 conference "Constituting the US in the 21st Century." Deadline Oct. 15, 2025. asanor.org/2026-confere...
The shift to use of "autumn” vs “backend,” 1950s, 2016. Some other interesting regional changes: www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...
Robert Grossman, Ronald Rodent, 1967.
John Kascht, David Bowie, Washingtonian, 1989
“As of late July, state officials had already signed more than $245 million in contracts for building and operating the facility, which officially opened July 1.”
“I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole.”
At a memorial and rally today in Oslo following the murder of 34-year-old welfare worker Tamima Nibras Juhar by a right-wing extremist.
“Now Texas lawmakers are working on legislation to further restrict abortion medication sent in from other states. The bill would allow members of the public to file lawsuits against the medicines providers and to keep some of the money.” www.npr.org/2025/08/30/n...
And-a now, let's-a welcome back the Hey Man Dancers as they do the "Suffragette City Polka"
Etta Hulme on the Watergate trouble, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, early 1970s.
“Learning is a change in long-term memory; that’s the biological correlate of what we do in the classroom. Now that most mental effort tied to writing is optional, we need new ways to require the work necessary for learning. That means moving away from take-home assignments and essays…”
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), abridged, read by Meryl Streep, on 180g colored vinyl. #ClassicsOnVinyl
Herblock on Nixon's resignation, August 1974.
FEMA administrator "Michael Brown had no professional background managing disasters. A college friend of President George W. Bush's campaign manager, Brown was a lawyer and former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Administration before taking over FEMA."
I did an interview with Chris Stevenson on the Religion in American Experience podcast. We talked about religion and the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, the Beatles, Explo ‘72 in Dallas, pentecostalism, and more.
I remember seeing someone come out of a grocery store in an Østfold town wearing a black Jack Daniel’s t-shirt that had some great airbrushed country music graphics on it.
There are pockets of Americanophiles. Probably a Norwegian owner. More trucks in rural areas like this. But pretty unusual and not many larger trucks.
Some pretty rare truck art for Norway
Another new logo just dropped
Idea for new logo
“It was Meta and Mark Zuckerberg many, many years ago who used the very clichéd slogan, ‘move fast and break things.’ And that is very much something that many of these people embody.”
🎶 Antiques! / Every other sentiment's an antique / As obsolete as warships in the Baltic 🎶
Coastal cows
Keefe on James Dobson, Senator Bill Frist, and the separation of church and state, Chronicle Tribune, 4/27/2005.
Space jazz... diddley-skee, bleep bleep, squeej
"Dr. Strangelove, if the North Vietnamese still refuse to negotiate, what do we do then...?" Paul Conrad, January 1973.
Cameron Cardow & Nick Anderson on the Dobson-SpongeBob controversy, 2005. Dobson claimed SpongeBob promoted "the theme of 'tolerance and diversity,' which are almost always buzzwords for homosexual advocacy." And "kids should not be taught that homosexuality is just another 'lifestyle'..."
A Guns N' Roses song for a McDonald's commercial called "Welcome to the Jingle."
A good Guinness Record to go for would be longest moonwalk
Remember in 2005 when James Dobson went after SpongeBob and his “pro-homosexual” agenda? Here’s Mike Keefe’s take on the controversy from the Denver Post.
James Dobson at a migrant detention center in Texas, 2019: “illegal immigrants will continue flooding into this great land from around the world. Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate & unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture…”
One of the chapters in a book I co-wrote featured Dobson and his work. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/u...
I have definitely seen lots of “delving” and “rich tapestry”
Criminal presidents speak the loudest about "law and order." (Tony Auth cartoon, 1973.)
Tony Auth on the GOP, Nixon, and the DOJ, 1972.
Editorial cartoonist Tony Auth on debating a topic with his editor in the 70s.
My department will likely be advertising PhD studentships in American Studies in late fall/early winter. Includes: healthcare, pensions, research funds, maternity/paternity leave, paid vacation...The yearly salary is apprx: NOK 532,200-575,400 ($52k-$56k). See more: www.hf.uio.no/english/rese...
Paul Conrad on the body count in Cambodia and on the campus of Kent State, May 1970.
Niche hobby would be only collecting postcards about the postcard business.
“…at the Dept of Housing & Urban Dev, a senior official told employees on Monday that the agency will no longer provide any material in languages other than English. He said it was part of an effort to carry out President Trump's executive order…that made English the country's official language.”
Barry Blitt in the New Yorker on Donald Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize campaign.
Sample sermons from 1930s Texas: "Do the accumulating judgments of the last few years may the near approach of the great Tribulation? Increasing Judgments, Floods, Droughts, Dust Storms, Earthquakes....Roman Catholics and Communists." Also, hammond organ and violin.
Daniel R. Fitzpatrick on the GOP's New Deal-era problem, St Louis Post-Dispatch, 7/20/1935.
An Art Young illustration from The Masses, 1917.
Ran across this in some current research on religion and the New Deal. The past is not even past... The article is from the San Francisco Examiner, Oct 27, 1935.
These shared resources and ideas for different plans are a good help.
All of our exams have to be proctored at a special site that the university staffs. I’ve been thinking about getting in touch with an HE journalist here to see about taking the issue public. To me it seems like the admin doesn’t understand the threat chatbots pose to teaching and grading.
I’ve been looking for similar advice. My university has not allowed me to have a closed-book exam for a new American environmental history course I created. They say they don’t have the resources for the off-campus testing center. 🤷
Another bowls and mugs day at the Oslo studio.
“Has this post-training approach put us back on track toward something like A.G.I.?…these changes now feel narrow—more like the targeted improvements you’d expect from a software update than like the broad expansion of capabilities in earlier generative-A.I. breakthroughs.”
This is the truth. “…once you become a migraineur, as doctors sometimes call us, you are always wondering when your next attack will be, planning how you might strategize around it, scrutinizing your life for possible triggers, and looking for some new treatment that might curb the agony.”
“Putin was indicted by the international criminal court in 2023, and still faces arrest in 125 countries, for his alleged role in the war crime of abducting those children and transferring them from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
The best people. Real pros. “Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between Trump and Putin in Anchorage.”
You can either have taco-flavored mackerel or pizza-flavored mackerel. Your pick!
A majestic oak tree on the coast south of Oslo that’s over 500 years old.
Just did a catch-and-release of a European garden spider. Safe travels, buddy.
Ahead of new print alert! You can now read Samuel J. Klee's "Drawing Barbed Wire: The Tule Lake Scrapbook of 1942" from the October 2025 issue. #envhist #envhum www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Another in the #ClassicsOnVinyl series. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), abridged and read by George Plimpton, on 180g coke-bottle vinyl.
It was on its way looking like that
That time nine years ago when the British crime drama Vera was filming on my campus
We’ve circled back to the wood paneling now
“People often misunderstand or forget that these are human beings. These are human beings who have suffered trauma. They are human beings who have significant medical issues. More and more, I am seeing an older population—people who are coming into homelessness for the first time as older adults.”
“A Missouri resident has been infected with a brain-eating amoeba, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services announced Wednesday.”
The start of the school year also marks the beginning of checking-for-lice season
Paul Conrad's 1988 LA Times editorial cartoon on reparations for Japanese Americans who had been stripped of their rights and imprisoned during WWII.
Just passed an accidental Clyfford Still
What if the new Taylor Swift album IS the Jeffrey Epstein list
Late in 1932, Billy Sunday made an impassioned plea for the enforcement of prohibition laws. He then laid blame for the country's troubles on "infidel evolutionists, university teachings, modernism and liberalism."
A squib in a 1919 Kansas newspaper on the popular fundamentalist preacher Billy Sunday: "Billy Sunday says that if the Lord would send him to hell he would depopulate it. Guess that's right. If we were there and saw Billy coming, we'd certainly leave if possible."
The 1919 sheet music for the popular song "Every Day Will Be Sunday When The Town Goes Dry"
Mark Twain to William Dean Howells in 1884 on a publisher Twain was currently feuding with: “I think that if he were given the copyright on the Bible, his gang are stupid enough to publish it in such a way as to lose money on it.”
Spreadable mackerel with a taco flavor
Kurt Schwitters, untitled (composition with tube and horseshoe), 1943-45.
Interested in teaching, researching, & studying at the University of Oslo? Apply for a student or scholar Fulbright with us. 2026-27 deadlines are: Sept for scholars, Oct for undergrad & grad students. Scholars: fulbright.no/grants/grant... Students: fulbright.no/grants/grant...
Kurt Schwitters, untitled (1930). Definitely a work that looks like it was done 30 years in the future.
Robert Pryor's 1972 take on JFK and LBJ's "Best and Brightest"
Edward Sorel, "Nixon as Quaker" (1970).
Herblock on Ike’s go-slow, conservative position on desegregation, 1958.
“Trump readies federal moves on D.C. crime, may deploy National Guard” www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
Drew Dernavich, 2010
Someone really loves spilt Mountain Dew.
Inching our way to 🍎 season
After his town hall wrapping with chants of "Vote him out!" Nebraska Rep. Mike Flood told Morning Edition he understands it is "cathartic" for constituents to voice their opinions.
Retirement Castle: The New Shower Chairs Are In!
Always glad to see Plopper the Pig, the Space Coyote, and Üter Zörker.
Post-party flowers
If you grew up in a church in the 70s and 80s, this is a familiar feature
At the 50th anniversary of my mother and father-in-law. The Norwegians don’t mess around when it comes to cake and snack time 🍰.
Random cat sighting during evening hike. Very friendly.
Clank, clank, clank
A couple of snaps from today in Sannidal. Sunny, 68 degrees.
