Triumph of the WIll? A New Era in American Politics

This issue is co-edited by Sonja Boos and Jeffrey S. Librett.

How to respond to the current political madness? -- Meeting just after the 2016 election, the Editorial Board of Konturen decided to hold, as soon as feasible, at the University of Oregon an interdisciplinary colloquium that would attempt to shed some light on a number of different aspects of the new regime and of the recently ascendant right wing populist tendencies that favor it. For this occasion, we invited faculty from several relevant fields to give brief statements. Held on February 24th, 2017, the colloquium was extremely well attended, and the presentations generated intense discussion. It was an unusual--and unusually focused--event, bringing together as it did scholars (as well as students and community members) from widely divergent fields to discuss the international crisis in the midst of which we currently find ourselves,, a crisis with potential life and death stakes for multitudes now and in the future. The statements that follow represent a selection from the interventions on that day.