The project brings together US based feminist scholars and Argentine activists, scholars and community organizations to preserve materials related to twenty-first century transfeminist movements while developing a new model for ethical, community-centered digital archiving. The archive will serve as both a platform for collective memory and a tool for strengthening trans and gender-dissident communities whose histories are often marginalized or erased.

The project is also supported by staff from WashU Libraries, including Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis, 1945–1992 co-director and Curator of Local History Miranda Rectenwald, and the Data Services team. The project team will work with Rectenwald who has experience with LGBTQ+ focused archives that are built in dialogue with community partners. The project will also benefit from the broader Data Services team at WashU Libraries, who have expertise in supporting faculty with digital humanities projects and open source programs.

Built using Mukurtu CMS, an open-source platform designed for community stewardship of digital heritage, the archive is expected to include zines, photographs, videos, oral testimonies, manifestos, artwork and social media content.

Read more on the Center for the Humanities website.

Of the tens of thousands of pieces in the Newman collection, his favorite was a unique 1792 gold pattern produced with the thought of securing a coinage contract from the fledgling U.S. Mint. In his 1975 article “Unique gold pattern coin of 1792 jingled in Washington’s pocket,” Eric P. Newman persuasively argued that this coin landed in George Washington’s hands.

The US eventually built its own Mint, not relying on outside contractors. The Founding Fathers understood that U.S. production of its own money represented a tangible symbol of national sovereignty. Jacob Perkins, who produced the Washington coin, thus did not win a Mint contract, but went on to develop anti-counterfeiting technology related to paper money. Still, the connection of Perkins’ gold coin to the Washington estate is one of the more intriguing stories in early American numismatics.

The depiction of Washington on this coin relates to the Congressional debate of the period. In general, Federalists supported the notion of placing presidential portraits on the national coinage, while Jeffersonian Republicans opposed the idea. The issue was hotly debated, with the Jeffersonian Republicans eventually winning by a narrow margin. In the production of a pattern piece, the coiner had to guess how the controversy would be resolved. Clearly, he guessed wrong!

In 2018, this coin sold for $1,740,000 as part of the Eric P. Newman collection. After being on loan to George Washington’s Mount Vernon in recent years, the coin was recently donated by a subsequent owner to the permanent collection of Mount Vernon, where it is now on exhibit.

We also want to help spread the news about the centenary festival happening in October in Stonington, Connecticut, hosted by our good friends at The James Merrill House (JMH). Click through to see the conference overview and to register. Read on to explore images from some of the postcards along with related content from the upcoming festival.

In our centenary exhibit at John M. Olin Library we focused on six important places to Merrill and his poetry. This gave us the idea of printing a set of postcards (one card for each place), like a booklet you might buy in a souvenir shop. Each card can be detached and mailed. The cover follows the design theme of the exhibit itself, which is based on Merrill’s 1962 book of poems, Water Street.  

The title of that book is the street where Merrill’s longtime home in Stonington was located, which is where the James Merrill House has been since his death in 1995. The JMH has long had a writers-in-residence program. You can hear past fellows of the JMH reading the book in its entirety, in the Reading Of Water Street session led by Rob Schlegel at the centenary festival.

Each of the six cards has a different draft page of a poem on the face of the card. We wanted to present Merrill’s worksheets in a manner similar to natural scenes or buildings from a traditional postcard—artifacts of Merrill’s imaginative landscape or architecture, if you will, as it was being formed. One can visit and experience for oneself these worksheets and drafts in the James Merrill Papers.

The choice for the Greece postcard is “Days of 1964,” the closing poem of Merrill’s National Book Award-winning book from 1966, Nights and Days. In the poem he lovingly and archetypally portrays his neighborhood in Greece, his matronly cleaning woman, Kyria Kleo, and his new lover, Strato Mouflouzelis.

At the Merrill’s Poetry of Place session, Rachel Hadas and David Yezzi will be in conversation about Merrill’s poetry of place, with Rachel focusing on his poems set in Greece.

On this draft page from Scripts for the Pageant, the third book in the Ouija board trilogy, Merrill sets the scene in a classroom of an old English manor house that would be come to be called Sandover. This is where all the lessons of the spirit world would soon be revealed.

In Ghosts, Ouija & The Occult, Paul Merrill will discuss The Changing Light at Sandover and Merrill’s engagement with mysticism, spiritualism, and the occult.

The first page of a “Lost in Translation” draft is on the face of the Southampton card. The jigsaw puzzle at the center of the poem is one of many objects from Merrill’s life that inspired him to piece together multi-faceted works of literary art. Puzzles in general always fascinated Merrill, especially those involving letters and words, and many of the poems he crafted could be considered puzzles themselves.

Two sessions, both including workshops, speak to these themes: Objects & Poems, with Timothy Donnelly; and Wordplay & Crosswords, with Adrienne Raphel, Christopher Spaide, and Natan Last.

The back of each card features detail from an image of another selected item in the respective exhibit case. The back also includes an overview of that case and a QR code to access our various Merrill resources in WashU Libraries Special Collections.

The artwork of David Jackson, Merrill’s longtime partner and housemate in four of the places featured in the exhibit, is prevalent in the exhibit and included on two of the cards. On the Stonington card it is Jackson’s painting of a six-year-old Merrill bust on the terrace of their home at 107 Water Street (which Merrill also describes in his poem “Bronze”).

There will be a number of opportunities to explore Stonington and 107 Water Street during the festival, including Merrill in Stonington, in which Sibby Lynch and Willard Spiegelman will lead an exploration of Merrill’s life and writing in Stonington. There are also three tours available, throughout the weekend: James Merrill Apartment Tour, Stonington Village Literary Walking Tour, and The Stonington Cemetery, Poets Corner Tour.

One of the houses featured in James Merrill’s Poetic Places is Merrill’s and David Jackson’s abode in Athens, Greece from 1964-1979, Athinaion Efivon 44, as depicted in this drawing by Jackson. Like their Water Street home, it was a nondescript, modest residence with small, private rooms in which the two men could spend solitary time writing and painting, or together at the Ouija board. Prints of the drawing were sent as a Christmas greeting card to friends, in 1964.

In The Apartment Aesthetic, Antoinette Brim-Bell and Walt Hunter will have a conversation on the symbolic and literal roles of houses in literature. This session and others will show how Merrill’s life and work fit into the larger literary world.

These are just a sampling of the exciting programming offered at the Stonington Literary Festival. For example, Henri Cole will be giving the keynote; Hilton Als will be reading from A Different Person; and Stephen Yenser and Langdon Hammer will be hosting two panels. Sessions are filling up fast, so we encourage you to register ASAP. Register at the James Merrill House & Writer-in-Residence Program website.

If do not live in the St. Louis area and you are interested in receiving a copy of the postcard booklets, please email joelminor@wustl.edu. Copies will also be available at the festival.

Also Read: James Merrill Centenary Exhibition

About the Author

Name

Joel Minor

Job Title

Curator of Modern Lit Collection/Manuscripts

Mj Jones (BA History, ’26) won the undergraduate award for her senior honor thesis, “Mapping a World’s Fair: A Comparative Analysis of Native American Experience at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.” Jones’ thesis is an examination of the experiences of Native American at the 1904 World’s Fair examining multiple locations and how they were participants, performers, and visitors in those sites. Using material from the St. Louis 1904 World’s Fair Collection, she analyzed photographs, maps, and other primary sources to explore this under-represented aspect of the World’s Fair. 

Dalen Wakeley-Smith, an assistant professor of history, and Jones’s thesis advisor wrote in a statement of support, “Her work shows how a close reading of primary sources can lead to interesting and innovative interpretations of space, mobility, and questions around race which were at the forefront of American’s minds in 1904.”

Frauke Thielecke (PhD candidate in Comparative Literature, International Writers Track, ’29) received the graduate award for her research paper, “Between Brushstroke and Cut: Editing Leon Golub’s Persona in Kartemquin’s Golub (1988),” written for Assistant Professor John Powers’s class, Film Historiography, in fall 2025. Thielecke conducted research in the extensive Kartemquin Films Collection acquired by WashU Libraries in 2020.

Due to the unique nature of the collection, she was able to access internal Kartemquin records relating to fundraising, grant applications, production notes, correspondence, material on editing, promotion material, and photographs. The collection offers researchers insight into the decisions filmmakers make in crafting a finished film, and Thielecke’s research details that process using those materials and with an original interview she conducted with the film’s director and founder of Kartemquin Films, Gordon Quinn.

Powers wrote in his letter of recommendation, “I take Thielecke’s essay as exemplary of the research process. Throughout its composition, Thielecke committed herself to the hypothesis formation, testing, refining, and reflection that are essential components of historical argumentation.”

We are delighted to share both projects on WashU’s Scholarly Repository: 

Mapping a World’s Fair: A Comparative Analysis of Native American Experience at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition

Between Brushstroke and Cut: Editing Leon Golub’s Persona in Kartemquin’s Golub (1988)

You can view past winning projects on the Mendel Sato Research Award Projects page on WashU’s Scholarly Repository.

Published by WashU Libraries on Pressbooks

The Scholarly Communications & Digital Publishing (ScholPub) department of WashU Libraries is excited to announce the publication of a new open-access book. Breaking Out of the Culture Box is a short guidebook introducing readers to critical pedagogy in foreign language education as a logical extension of the liberal arts’ core mission to encourage the analysis of (social) problems in order to arrive at just solutions. The book is organized into seven sections, each of which addresses a distinct aspect of the authors’ research on critical pedagogies and how to incorporate them into your teaching. The sections cover the initial inspiration behind the authors’ research on critical approaches to language teaching; the shortcomings of traditional representations of culture and “diverse” voices; an overview of alternative critical pedagogy approaches; and examples and opportunities for integrating those approaches into the classroom. Readers are encouraged to jump between sections based on their current needs and interests.

Kerschen and Jenkins developed the guidebook as part of their research into how best to critically rethink and diversify their daily teaching and curriculum. As they write in the Introduction, “We were dissatisfied with the representations of culture provided in our textbooks and traditional teaching materials and wondered how they could be made better. How to challenge monolithic portrayals of culture and shift the focus to the diversity of identities within the target culture as well as our own classrooms? In effect, how to de-center course materials and teach more inclusively? How to develop a critical mindset in ourselves and our students? And how to go about this systematically?” The guidebook is designed to help answer these questions, as well as provide a starting point for others just beginning to explore critical pedagogy and how best to incorporate it in their teaching.

Breaking Out of the Culture Box is an OER (Open Educational Resource) published by WashU Libraries and supported by an Arts & Sciences Teaching Innovation Award.

About the Authors

Katherine Kerschen is a lecturer in Germanic languages and literatures at WashU. Her research explores how different instructional methods affect the processes and outcomes of adult second language acquisition. Kerschen earned her bachelor’s degree in German and psychology, with a minor in applied linguistics, from WashU. She earned her master’s degree in applied linguistics from the Technische Universität (TU) Dortmund and a doctorate in German applied linguistics and language science from the Pennsylvania State University.

Carol Jenkins is a lecturer in Germanic languages and literatures at WashU. Her research focuses on literary expressions of sociopolitical developments, particularly in the first half of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth centuries. Jenkins earned her bachelor’s degree from Carleton College, and her master’s and doctorate from WashU.

About Open Books at WashU

Are you interested in creating an open textbook or accessible digital publication related to teaching, learning, or research at Washington University? Pressbooks is an easy-to-use tool for WashU authors to publish openly licensed books in multiple formats on a professional platform optimized for learning. Contact Cadence Cordell, Digital Publishing Manager, to request a consultation.

The book follows a wandering tea monk named Dex, whose work involves serving tea to people and providing them well-needed space to rest and confide their concerns. However, Dex struggles to find satisfaction in their work. Furthermore, they’re distracted by the thought of hearing cricket-song; a near impossible wish, as crickets are all but extinct on the continent. Dex’s desire to hear crickets leads them out into the unsettled wilderness, where they meet Mosscap: the first robot that humans have seen in centuries, when robots first gained self-awareness and vanished into the wilds. The two become unlikely travel companions, and on their journey, they discuss topics as menial as cooking and as significant as figuring out your purpose in life.

As you might glean from the description, the novella is less focused on an overarching plot and more on the characters’ everyday experiences. As you read, you feel like you’re on the road with Dex and Mosscap, sharing in their quiet conversations and learning about their differences and similarities. Chambers is adept at writing about alien cultures and species, and it comes across in her depiction of robots, who she depicts as avid students of nature as they try to figure out their place in the world.

However, the reason why I return to A Psalm for the Wild-Built ­—and cozy fiction in general—is that it is a genre built on kindness. These stories are about people being kind to others, to the world, and to themselves. And in these trying times, I think there is great value in seeking out spaces where kindness is placed first and foremost.

Generative AI is used by many people in different aspects of their lives, but the Libraries wanted to focus on students understanding how they could successfully utilize Generative AI in their coursework.

The following workshops were offered and are now available for viewing on the WashU Libraries YouTube channel:

• Level Up Your Research Game: An Introduction to Generative AI: This session delves into the world of generative AI, where students learn how to leverage this powerful tool to streamline the research process and find relevant sources.

• Artificial Intelligence Tools to Optimize and Advance Your Research: Explores how AI can streamline your library research. This workshop offers practical guidance and hands-on practice in using AI tools, discussing their benefits and challenges in research workflows.

• Prompt Power: Using CLEAR Strategies for Effective GenAI Results: Discover how to get the most out of generative AI tools like ChatGPT using the CLEAR prompt framework. In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to craft purposeful, targeted prompts that improve AI output for research, instruction, and everyday library work. Whether you’re new to AI or looking to refine your approach, this workshop will give you practical strategies to write prompts that are Clear, Logical, Explicit, Adaptive, and Reflective.

• Research Like a Pro: Verifying AI-Generated Content: While navigating the complexities of academic research, ensuring the accuracy and credibility of AI-generated data is quickly emerging as an essential research skill. This session will demonstrate practical strategies for cross-referencing AI content with reputable sources, highlight the importance of human oversight, and provide tips for developing critical evaluation skills. Leave equipped with the tools to assess and use AI-generated information in your scholarly work. 

• Citation, Attribution, and AI: Disclosing AI Use in Research: Major citation styles have provided guidance on citing artificial intelligence, and publishers and organizations are also requiring a narrative explanation of the use of AI. Join us in this session to learn more about citing and disclosing AI-generated information, data, and images in your academic research.

If you have any questions about what was covered in the workshops, please reach out to the Libraries or to the librarian(s) who presented the workshop.

The Libraries is currently working on a new AI workshop series for fall 2026, which will run the week of September 21, 2026. If you have ideas about what you would like to have included in the next workshop series, please contact Theresa Mastrodonato, tmastrodonato@wustl.edu.

In 2024, St. Louis’s long-running alternative weekly the Riverfront Times (RFT) was purchased by an undisclosed buyer who then closed the paper. In the midst of this unexpected news, Miranda Rectenwald, curator of local history, immediately contacted editor Sarah Fenske to see if WashU Special Collections could save the newspaper’s archive. With Fenske’s assistance, Rectenwald coordinated the acquisition of 138 bound volumes of the print edition, spanning 1977 to 2013, along with a small amount of DVDs with digital images.

The Riverfront Times Collection print issues are now inventoried and available to researchers. 

Acquiring this collection ensures a valuable local history resource is preserved and usable by researchers. Rectenwald notes, “I knew from previously trying to locate a back issue of RFT that the most comprehensive run of issues was at the newspaper’s offices. When I heard the paper was shutting down, I was heartbroken that this treasure might be lost.”

Digital Archives

Rectenwald worked with Sarah Weeks, WashU Libraries’ web and email archive coordinator, to ensure the Riverfront Times website, with issues covering 1998 to May 2024, was digitally preserved via the wayback machine from Internet Archive. These issues can be accessed by anyone and no login is required. Local researchers, Joshua Lawrence and Jaclyn Crow were able to use files saved on Internet Archive to create the RFT Database, “a free, open-access archive of articles that originally appeared on the Riverfront Times website.”

Currently issues from 1977 to 1997 are only in analog-print format. For researchers unable to visit the library, some digitization can be done on request (as staffing time permits; fees vary).  Full digitation and online access for the earliest twenty years of publication remains on the Libraries’ wish list for the future.

Snapshot of St. Louis Culture

If you lived in St. Louis during the 1980s onwards, the Riverfront Times was a reliable, constant media source you could depend on. On Wednesdays the paper would be delivered to paper boxes throughout the city and county, and people could pick up a free copy to catch up on local political news, environmental issues, and find out what cultural events or concerts were happening that coming weekend. It covered LGBTQ+ topics when other papers would not. The paper hired and cultivated local investigative reporters, film and music critics, and in each issue, until he sold the paper in 1998, founder and publisher Ray Hartmann wrote a weekly column. 

After it was purchased by New Times, a company that purchased many alternative papers across the country, including the Village Voice in New York, the format became more standardized. Staffing shifted under various editors, with some national film reviewers added to the mix. It was the end of a free-wheeling era that coincided with the rise of the internet as a place where people got their news, yet the paper remained a much-loved part of St. Louis life and a source of local journalism until its closure in 2024.

Hartmann, who died in a car crash on April 21, 2026, was a passionate and thoughtful writer. His weekly commentary would highlight whatever pressing topic was at the forefront of local news that week. WashU’s Common Reader published tributes from former colleagues and writers who contributed to the Riverfront Times. Hartmann greatly influenced many people’s lives, both professionally and personally.

In a transformed media landscape where writers are still trying to find their footing, the solid bound volumes of the Riverfront Times reveal a multifaceted portrait of St. Louis. It offers a look back at the cultural life of a city, viewed through a publication that covered stories a daily newspaper might not have deemed worthy or that didn’t fit their publication style.

The Riverfront Times Collection is now available for use at Special Collections. Consult the finding aid on ArchivesSpace for a list of issues. All researchers are asked to make an appointment in advance to view Special Collections materials.  

In the eternal Time War, Red and Blue are agents of rival factions, the two sides of a conflict that stretches from an immemorial beginning, forward to an unknowable future, and across every version of every universe. In service of “the Agency,” a techno-utopian hive mind, Red is the best at her job, making and unmaking events across time and space to cement Agency’s dominance. Opposing the Agency is “Garden,” a vast organic consciousness for whom Blue specializes in playing the long game as she plants seeds and lays careful groundwork for Garden’s victory. One taunting letter marked “Burn before reading,” launches a correspondence between the agents that threatens to change not just Red and Blue, but the fabric of the Time War, itself.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Glastone is a sapphic triumph of speculative fiction. Part third person narrative and part epistolary, the novella’s innovative structure allows both authors to shine. Each chapter focuses on one agent, with Gladstone penning Red’s chapters and El-Mohtar providing Blue’s. The result is an impressively cohesive and compelling love story between two characters who feel at once impossibly alien and undeniably human.

It is this humanity—a desire for connection, for understanding, for freedom—that forms the novella’s heart, and it is this humanity that El-Mohtar and Gladstone artfully center throughout the text. The details of the world in which Red and Blue reside (and indeed the exact mechanics of the titular Time War) are left intentionally vague, leaving space for readers to connect with the complicated interpersonal and intrapersonal struggles Red and Blue face. The universe feels just real enough to ground the action without distracting from the novella’s emotional core.

If you are looking for specificity in worldbuilding or a “hard magic system” in your science fiction novels, this one may not be for you. However, if you are willing to step into the unknown, This is How You Lose the Time War will reward you with a moving and emotionally resonant story that is bound to stand the test of time.

About the Author

Name

Esther Gabriel

Job Title

Accessioning Archivist

The first Danforth Campus school to be fully integrated into the Research Profiles system, the Bursky School of Public Health is also WashU’s first new school in 100 years. Explore faculty expertise at the Bursky School of Public Health in Research Profiles.

Research Profiles is a central hub for exploring the expertise, research interests, global reach, and publications of WashU faculty. Users can search by name, research unit, concept, or keyword to discover researchers, browse their publications, find collaborators, and visualize connections.

Faculty from all other Danforth Campus schools will be added in the coming months, with all full-time WashU faculty slated to be included in Research Profiles by the end of the 2026-27 academic year.

The Research Profiles expansion is a key facet of the Here & Next strategic plan. These efforts are led by a dedicated team from WashU Libraries and Bernard Becker Medical Library with strategic direction and funding from the Provost’s office, Digital Intelligence & Innovation (DI2) Accelerator, WashU Medicine Office of the Dean, Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS), and WashU Medicine departments.

Published by WashU Libraries on Pressbooks

Public Speaking for Modern Learners: Self-Assurance, Adaptability, and Professional Growth provides a practical, streamlined approach to oral communication in social and professional settings. The book seeks to meet the needs of modern learners and provide accessible, relevant, and adaptable lessons on developing communication and public speaking skills in a variety of environments. Joe Cruz, Academic Director of Management & Organizational Change at WashU Continuing & Professional Studies (CAPS), developed the text for Oral Communication, a required course for the BSIS in Strategic Communications at WashU.

Each chapter of Public Speaking for Modern Learners focuses on building specific public speaking skills, such as developing strategies for managing anxiety and building confidence; learning to structure your ideas to create a purposeful, easy-to-follow message; understanding your audience and tailoring your message to them; and more. In addition, the book is designed to be a living document that can be continuously updated and revised to reflect new research, communication strategies, and up-to-date examples. As Cruz puts it, “Communication itself is an ever-evolving process, shaped by human experience. This book is designed to reflect that same dynamic. It’s a shared tool, built to support you now, but also to adapt with each new group of students who bring their own voices into the process” (Learning Through an Open Educational Resource).

Public Speaking for Modern Learners is an open educational resource published by WashU Libraries in partnership with the DI2 Accelerator Award for Open Educational Resources. The complete list of award winners is shared on the WashU Libraries’ website.

About the Author

Joe Cruz is the Academic Director of Management and Organizational Change and an instructor at the School of Continuing & Professional Studies (CAPS) at WashU. He earned his B.A. from Kean University, his M.A. from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and his Ph.D. in mass communications from Pennsylvania State University.

His research and teaching interests include media ethics, organizational communication, and civic engagement. His work has appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Communication, Atlantic Journal of Communication, and Qualitative Research Reports in Communication. He has taught public speaking and oral communication for several years.

About Open Books at WashU Libraries

Are you interested in creating an open textbook or accessible digital publication related to teaching, learning, or research at Washington University? Pressbooks is an easy-to-use tool for WashU authors to publish openly licensed books in multiple formats on a professional platform optimized for learning. Contact Cadence Cordell, Digital Publishing Manager, to request a consultation.

Child characters appear in both newspaper strips and comic books. The Dowd Illustration Research Archive (DIRA) houses multiple examples of both formats, which when compared, show a significant difference in how these child characters are portrayed. These examples can be found in materials housed in the Craig Yoe Teaching Collection and the Center for the Humanities Comics Collection, which collectively contain both original comic drawings and printed comic books.

Newspaper comic strips serve a primarily adult audience. Characters are usually adults themselves and play into more mature situations and humor. Children will occasionally appear in these strips, but their portrayal is often, at best, set dressing or props for their parents. At worst, these children are pushed into the “loveable nuisance” archetype.

Gasoline Alley, created by Frank King, is one of America’s longest lasting and most beloved newspaper strips. Originally meant as a strip focused on cars and mechanics, editor Joseph Patterson wanted to attract a larger female audience and insisted that a baby be introduced into the cast. The character Skeezix would become a mainstay in the comic for decades.

DIRA houses a few original Gasoline Alley strips in the Craig Yoe Teaching Collection. One strip shows the Wallet Family on an outing to the lake. While the strip only has three panels, the close family bond between Walt and his sons, Skeezix and Corky, is clear. The banter between Walt and Skeezix is teasing and light as they both have smiles on their faces.

Furthermore, Walt shows off his genuinely good fathering skills when he holds the boys’ hands into the lake and warns them not to wade out too far. The evident bond potentially stems from the fact that Skeezix and Walt’s relationship is heavily based on Frank King and his own son. The strip’s target audience was also families, which is another probable driver of Gasoline Alley’s healthy portrayal of children and families.

A less complex, and moderately less beloved, American comic strip exemplifies another role that children are often thrown into by a gag-a-day style comic strip. The archetype known as the “loveable nuisance” depicts child characters within adult oriented comic strips. Lil’l Folks by Tack Knight has a cast of characters predominately made up by children but is still written for an adult/parental audience.

The strip titled “The Upstart” is generally lighthearted, but the central joke is unfairly at a child’s expense. In this particular Lil’l Folks strip a group of children race home from school when an older girl asks what Reg’s full name. A youngster responds, “Reginald Sitdown–that’s what the teacher calls him!”

This draws a shocked look from the two other kids, who may understand the phrase as a mean-spirited jab from their teacher. It’s a mild example of the role kids are pushed into by their authority figures, but it can still have a lasting impact. Reg’s predicament, however, is nowhere as egregious as some of the stories explicitly written for kids have turned out to be.

The Center for the Humanities Comics Collection holds thousands of comic books from over five decades; some of these titles specifically target a younger demographic. When looking through the comic books published specially for a juvenile audience, themes of endangerment, abandonment, and abuse were presented as common and central to the stories.

Our Gang is a comic book that covers the spectrum of dismal to damagingly offensive. The first story follows a group of kids who help a washed-up circus performer get his truck running, track down his escaped lion and tiger, and find him a new job. For all this effort, the kids get warm praise, but no other compensation for the labor, which is not entirely unsurprising. What is surprising, however, is that this story is the only one which features a fully human cast.

The second story in Our Gang, titled “Flip and Dip,” immediately throws that feel-good atmosphere created by the first story off a cliff. The characters here are anthropomorphic monkeys living in the jungle, and the story revolves around a series of miscommunications that ends with every single member of the family wanting to violently hurt one another. The final panel of the comic shows the parent monkeys spanking their crying children with smiles. This story stood out horribly, as the initial conflict is brought on by the children wanting to do something nice for their parents. The central moral of the story becomes a warning against doing any favors for your parents lest it backfire.

Another children’s comic imparting nearly the same message in an equally disturbing way is found in a Giggle Comics story featuring the character Superkatt. What makes this particular storyline far more disturbing is the fact that it’s meant as a Mother’s Day tribute where the opening panel depicts a mother’s hand around her child’s throat.

The story follows Superkatt trying to make this a special Mother’s Day for himself and his friend Humphrey. Nearly every plan Superkatt makes goes awry and eventually the two find themselves without presents and in prison. Shockingly, Humphrey’s mother who abandoned him as a child is another prisoner, but the reunion devolves into a berating and beating.

Superkatt doesn’t fare much better, as his mother waits at home with a sour expression and a baseball bat. Again, the moral being imparted to kids being no matter how much a child wants a relationship with their mother and the lengths they go to please them, it’s a lost cause and will be met with corporal punishment.

Ultimately, it’s hard to imagine any of these storylines getting approved for publication today. A historical gripe against comic books has been their supposed bad influence on children, causing delinquency. Perhaps these stories of punishment are meant as a counterbalance. With stories like these being handed to children, one has to consider the lasting impact on young minds. These comics suggest that it may be in a kid’s best interest to keep looking over their parent’s shoulder at the Sunday morning funnies.

Maria Pellegrino is an MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture candidate at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and serves as the Dowd Illustration Research Archive fellow (February-May 2026) in the Julian Edison Department of Special Collections.