Department of Philosophy professor Clancy Smith recently published a chapter titled “Days of Future Past: Segregation, Oppression, and Technology in X-men and America” in the edited volume Ages of the X-men: Essays on the Children of the Atom in Changing Times from McFarland Publishing.
Smith’s chapter investigates the narrative of the X-men comics through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement as a metaphor for the tension between the nonviolent civil disobedience of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the more radical position of Malcolm X. The original X-men comics were first published in 1963, the same year Dr. King wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Smith is currently teaching a course on popular culture and philosophy this semester in conjunction with a convocation film series throughout the fall.