This symposium explores the relationship of superheroes to questions of power, ideology, social relations, and political culture. It represents the first time that a political science journal has devoted sustained attention to the superhero genre as it is reflected in the pages of comic books and graphic novels, and on the big screen.

Journalists consider the importance of events and the audience’s interest in them when deciding on which events to report. Events most likely to be reported are those that are both important and can capture the audience’s interest. In turn, the public is most likely to become aware of important news when some aspect of the story piques their interest. We suggest an efficacious means of drawing public attention to important news stories: dogs. Examining the national news agenda of 10 regional newspapers relative to that of the New York Times, we evaluated the effect of having a dog in a news event on the likelihood that the event is reported in regional newspapers. The “dog effect” is approximately equivalent to the effect of whether a story warrants front- or back-page national news coverage in the New York Times. Thus, we conclude that dogs are an important factor in news decisions.

Many Americans hold distorted views of elected officials and, as our study shows, the blame is due partly to our ideological biases and partly to mass media. Analyzing a nationally representative online survey, we corroborate recent research that found that one in five Americans still believe president Barack Obama is a Muslim and that almost seven in ten mistakenly think Sarah Palin, and not Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey, was the first to say “I can see Russia from my house.” Although race, political ideology, and “born-again” or evangelical Christian status were the primary drivers of misperceptions about Obama’s faith, media use had a more crucial role in predicting the more widespread misperception about Palin. Misattribution of the Fey quote to Palin was greatest among heavy viewers of traditional news media and late-night TV comedy, which is suggestive of the “lamestream media” effect often espoused by prominent Republican figures.

In 1979, writer Tom DeFalco was paired with artist and cocreator of Spider-Man, Steve Ditko, to work on an issue of Machine Man, one of the many superheroes populating the universe of Marvel Comics. Instead of the usual introduction and business chatter, Ditko challenged DeFalco during a first conversation: “Are you Tom? What gives you the right to write about heroes?” (Tucker 2012). By the time of this exchange, Ditko had not only (co-) created and continued numerous superhero stories, ranging from Captain Atom to Dr. Strange or the Hulk, but he had also dedicated a lot of thought to the question as to what composed true heroism. In the 1960s, he had already found answers in a place not uncommon for that time, namely, in the novels of a Russian immigrant whose work should serve, in her own words, as “the projection of an ideal man” (Rand 1943, ix; 1975, 162; 2005, 230): Ayn Rand (1905–1982).

This article analyzes the text complexity of political science research. Using automated text analysis, we examine the text complexity of a sample of articles from three leading generalist journals and four leading subfield journals. We also examine changes in text complexity across time by analyzing a sample of articles from the discipline’s flagship journal during a 100-year span. Although it is not surprising that a typical political science article is difficult to read, it is accessible to intelligent lay readers. We found little difference in text complexity across time or subfield.

Advocates for same-sex marriage have had much to celebrate. The last few years have shown that state after state and senator after senator have declared their support for full marriage equality. Such momentum suggests that their goals will be realized sooner rather than later. In this article, we analyze when senators announce their support for same-sex marriage. Contrary to the popularly held belief that their decisions will quickly snowball into filibuster-proof numbers, we find that most of the easy successes have already been achieved. The difficulty of securing the last few votes may take much longer.

Scholars often rely on student samples from their own campuses to study political behavior, but some studies require larger and more diverse samples than any single campus can provide. In our case, we wanted to study the real-time effects of presidential debates on individual-level attitudes, and we sought a large sample with diversity across covariates such as ideology and race. To address this challenge, we recruited college students across the country through a process we call “colleague crowdsourcing.” As an incentive for colleagues to encourage their students to participate, we offered teaching resources and next-day data summaries. Crowdsourcing provided data from a larger and more diverse sample than would be possible using a standard, single-campus subject pool. Furthermore, this approach provided classroom resources for faculty and opportunities for active learning. We present colleague crowdsourcing as a possible model for future research and offer suggestions for application in varying contexts.

Comic book heroes often have their origins in noir depictions of failed or failing states. The danger involved and the seeming anarchy that necessitates superheroes recall Hobbes's description of a state of nature and Leviathan as resolution. But comic book heroes generally inhabit states that are better identified by the Hobbes-inspired Carl Schmitt. Indeed, this articles argues that while the Hell's Kitchen of Daredevil comics has some characteristics of a state of nature, it is better characterized by the protracted crisis of state that Schmitt sees in liberal democracies. Hobbes and Schmitt elucidate the crisis that generates the need for a superhero but fail to explain why the superhero does not simply take over the city. This is better explained by American concepts of heroism which emphasize redemption and walking away from power (Lawrence and Jewett 2002).

The rapid diffusion of online social networking sites is changing the very nature of organizational communication. This is particularly true in higher education, where Facebook is increasingly being used as a means to engage with students, faculty, and alumni. Unfortunately, academic departments seeking to adopt such technologies often fail to understand the unique opportunities and challenges that accompany the adoption of social media. This article illuminates recent changes in organizational communication and describes the adoption of Facebook by a political science department at a midwestern state university. The authors develop a typology of Facebook posts to determine which types of information generate the most audience activity. They explain how this information can assist academic departments as they seek to bolster recruitment and retention of students, as well as ongoing investment from faculty and alumni.

Political science is falling behind a broad movement in the United States that seeks to reform the teaching of scientific literacy in undergraduate education. Indeed, political science is far behind that movement because the discipline does not have a collective commitment to science education at the undergraduate level. This article discusses prominent efforts in this reform movement and assesses the state of science education in our discipline. The authors propose an agenda for action on this issue in political science as well as fundamental educational benchmarks for undergraduate political science literacy.

Created by lawyer and psychologist William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman first appeared more than 70 years ago, “as lovely as Aphrodite, as wise as Athena, with the speed of Mercury, and the strength of Hercules” (Marston and Peter 1941). While she conforms to traditional articulations of gender in the way she performs an attractive, female, white, heterosexual, middle-to-upper class woman, she also unsettles gendered boundaries through performing a determined, astute, formidable warrior at the same time. This has led to a number of writers exploring whether Wonder Woman can or should be viewed as feminist.

Although most instructors care deeply about student writing, they often give little attention to the part of the writing process over which they maintain complete control: the assignment itself. Yet, the written prompt that we distribute is often where student confusion (and confused writing) begins. Using Bloom’s taxonomy as inspiration, we offer instructors a typology directly linked to course objectives, which we believe can be readily understood by student writers.

Research on political conflict can benefit immensely from fieldwork. However, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process is elaborate and daunting that discourages rather than encourages this type of research. Existing policies often are insensitive to the many uncertainties related to field research abroad, especially in conflict zones. Three reasons for this are identified in this article. First, the federal regulations to protect human subjects of social science research are most suitable for biomedical sciences. Second, there is huge gap between “procedural ethics” and “ethics in practice.” Third, there is a lack of communication or dialogue between researchers and IRBs. After discussing these reasons, I offer the following suggestions: bridging the gap between the researcher and the IRB; reducing delays in the IRB approval and revision process; encouraging collaboration and dialogue among researchers; and advocating a proactive stance by academic associations.

Watchmen (1987), written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, is a 12-part graphic novel that portrays real-life superheroes in a fictional United States of the 1980s. An alternate universe where ordinary people without superpowers were inspired by superhero comics and took on the crime-fighting in tights in the 1940s, the comic portrays an America vastly different from our reality. Since its publication more than two decades ago, the comic has been the subject of extensive study due to its breathtaking narrative structure as well as its acute deconstruction of the superhero genre itself. Indeed, one of the text's most brutal deconstructions comes from the way it addresses superheroic masculinity, from the misogynistic vigilante Rorschach to the emasculated ex-hero Nite Owl. Through its cast of male heroes, Watchmen deconstructs the superhero genre by rewriting masculine tropes such as vigilantism and patriotism and by exposing the inherent contradictions within these gender-bound tropes from the fascist undercurrents of violent patriotism to the often-hinted sexual dysfunction of the costume-fetish variety.

The humanitarian impulse in the United States routinely clashes with isolationist sentiment, with appeals to the national interest, and with apathy in and out of government. This class exercise encourages students to explore the contours of the debate over humanitarian intervention with a crisis unfolding in Belagua, a fictitious Latin American country. As the crisis deteriorates, students increasingly feel the tension between wanting to help the at-risk civilian population and avoiding a messy conflict from which the United States could have trouble extracting itself. The project requires students to address key questions about the US role in the Belagua case and to consider what the United States could or should have done in actual situations, such as Rwanda and Syria. Because these crises are likely to occur in the decades to come, this exercise initiates students to the challenges that the United States, as well as the international community, undoubtedly will face.