AMST authors

Hegemony — Antonio Gramsci / Stuart Hall

Power works by shaping culture, values, and “common sense” so that domination feels natural and people consent to the status quo instead of seeing it as forced.

Normalizing Trump — Jeff Tulis

Extreme or authoritarian actions become accepted as normal through repetition, proliferation, and projection: repeating claims, overwhelming people with many outrageous acts, and projecting one’s own faults onto others.

Americanness — Rashawn Ray, Gabriel Sanchez, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

American identity is contested and shaped by different experiences, histories, and demographic changes rather than one universal meaning of who counts as “American.”

Americanness — Eric Schmitt

American identity is framed through nationalism, sovereignty, ancestry, shared destiny, and belonging, often privileging a white European vision of America.

Stigma — Erving Goffman

A stigma is a socially discrediting attribute that marks someone as different, flawed, or less accepted within society.

Deviance — Howard Becker

Deviance is not an inherent quality of an act; it is created when social groups make rules and label certain people as outsiders.

Mythical Norm — Audre Lorde

The mythical norm is the imagined standard of power in society, usually white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure.

Interlocking Oppressions — Combahee River Collective

Systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism are connected and experienced together rather than separately.

Intersectionality — Kimberlé Crenshaw

Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how systems like race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability overlap, creating specific experiences that single-issue analysis misses.

Possessive Investment in Whiteness — George Lipsitz

Whiteness has material value because U.S. laws and institutions have historically invested benefits into white identity through housing, labor, citizenship, and wealth.

Representation — Stuart Hall

Representation is not just showing reality; it is the process through which media, language, and images create meaning and shape how people understand the world.

Alternative Media — Linda Jean Kenix

Alternative media is media associated with marginalized groups, protests, social movements, community participation, and critiques of the dominant status quo.

Oppositional Gaze — bell hooks

The oppositional gaze is a resistant way of looking where Black women critically view media that excludes, stereotypes, or dehumanizes them.

Gender — Judith Butler

Gender is not a fixed natural essence; it is produced through repeated behaviors, performances, and social expectations.

Trans* — Jack Halberstam

Trans* is an open-ended term for gender variance; the asterisk resists fixed categories and lets people define their own identities.

Self-Naming — Jack Halberstam

Self-naming means marginalized people should have the power to define their own identities instead of being named by doctors, institutions, or dominant society.

Heteronormativity — Kristen Cochrane

Heteronormativity is the belief system that assumes heterosexual and cisgender identities are the default, natural, and normal.

Medical Model of Disability — Disability Studies

The medical model understands disability as a problem located in the individual body that should be treated, corrected, fixed, or cured.

Social Model of Disability — UPIAS

The social model argues that society disables people through barriers, exclusion, inaccessible spaces, and oppressive attitudes rather than disability existing only in the body.

Normalcy — Lennard Davis

Normalcy is socially constructed; society creates the idea of the “normal” body and then marks disabled or different bodies as abnormal.

Disability as Justification for Inequality — Douglas Baynton

Disability has historically been used to justify inequality by framing women, people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized groups as defective or unfit.

Avant-Garde Art — Adrian Piper

Avant-garde art challenges power, consumerism, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and dominant values rather than simply producing beauty or desire.

Avant-Garde Art — Cosey Fanni Tutti

The avant-garde can be absorbed into the mainstream quickly, meaning it may coexist with mainstream culture rather than remain fully outside it.

Celebrity Culture — Sharon Marcus

Celebrity is produced through the interaction of the star, the media, and the public; fame depends on all three working together.

Parasocial Relationship — Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl

A parasocial relationship is a one-sided emotional attachment where a viewer or fan feels intimacy with a media figure who does not know them.

Teenyboppers — Sarah Baker

Teenyboppers are young pop fans, often girls, who are dismissed as unserious even though their fandom is important to mainstream popular music.

Mainstream as Metaphor — Alison Huber

The mainstream is not just what is popular; it is a metaphor for dominant culture, hegemony, and the power to define what feels normal.

Hip Hop — Imani Perry

Hip hop is a cultural form rooted in Black marginality and resistance, but it also moves through law, public opinion, authenticity, crossover, and mainstream commercialization.

Hip Hop as Mainstream Pop — Amy Coddington

Hip hop became “hit pop” as radio, race, and commercial systems helped transform rap from marginal culture into mainstream popular music.

Consumer Culture — Kerryn Higgs

Consumer culture is a historical system where identity, happiness, and social life become increasingly organized around buying and consumption.

Brand Culture — Sarah Banet-Weiser

Brand culture turns identity, politics, gender, and activism into marketable brands that people consume and perform.

Commodity Activism — Sarah Banet-Weiser

Commodity activism happens when corporations use social justice messages to sell products, turning activism into a consumer choice.

Black Lives Matter — Alicia Garza

Black Lives Matter asserts the value of Black life against anti-Black violence and demands a world where Black people are not killed with impunity.

Anti-Semitism — Pamela Nadell

Anti-Semitism is hatred, prejudice, or violence against Jewish people; Nadell emphasizes both historical persistence and modern outbreaks.

Settler Colonialism — Settler Colonial Theory

Settler colonialism is a structure where outsiders seize land, claim ownership, and seek to replace or dominate Indigenous populations while minimizing the harm done.

Zionism — Anti-Defamation League

Zionism is the movement for Jewish self-determination and statehood in the ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.

Due Process — Fifth Amendment

Due process means the government cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without fair legal procedures.

Habeas Corpus — Constitutional Law

Habeas corpus requires the government to bring a detained person before a court and justify the detention.

Immigration Enforcement / Authoritarianism — Heidi Altman

Immigration enforcement can be used as an authoritarian tool when the state expands detention, deportation, surveillance, and fear while weakening democratic rights.

White Supremacy in Mainstream Politics — Simon Clark

White supremacy is not only extremist violence; it can return to mainstream politics through coded language, policy, nationalism, and fear-based appeals.