Joseph Packer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3750823 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Packer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | Packer |
| SIGNATURE | PACKER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Central Michigan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2445-5846 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Writing for Machines, Formatting Originality: Plagiarism Detection and the Automation of Authorship
This article examines the institutional, technical, and ontological consequences of plagiarism detection platforms on contemporary academic writing. It argues that services like Turnitin and Grammarly do not simply detect plagiarism but actively reconfigure what counts as authorship, originality, and intellectual integrity. Drawing on historical and media-theoretical perspectives, the article traces plagiarism’s emergence as a culturally continge…
The White Knight: Batman as esoteric hero for the dissident right
This paper examines how white-nationalist and identitarian fan communities read The Dark Knight film series as a coded attack on liberal values by the secretly sympathetic writer-director Christopher Nolan. In a classic esoteric reading, white nationalists posit super villains like Ra's al Ghul and Bane as giving voice to the true message of the trilogy, namely, that liberal countries have become decadent and must be destroyed so as to give rise …
History at the end of the world: Decolonial revisionism in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok
From 19th-century novels to contemporary computer-animated adventure films, popular media culture provides no shortage of representations that subserve colonialist attitudes and perspectives. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) provides a rare decolonial fantasy, which is especially surprising given that it does so through the veneer of the big-budget superhero film. Registering a deep concern with public memory, the film spotlights and challenges the various …
American Conservatism Unmoored
The last decade witnessed a drastic reconfiguration of American conservatism by way of a newly emergent and energized dissident right. Beyond the question of ideology, this article argues that an essential aspect of this realignment occurs at the level of strategy, specifically with the adoption of agitational tactics pioneered by the progressive left. It attempts to make sense of this sea change, first, by tracing in broad strokes the history of…
Where We Produce One, We Produce All
Hillary Clinton and Katy Perry drink the blood of murdered children to live forever, Barack Obama and Tom Hanks participate in the sex trafficking and molestation of children, and a cabal of Satan worshippers control global events from behind the scenes. This is the central, animating idea behind QAnon, a right-wing populist conspiracy theory that has achieved a level of saturation in American and global politics (in)commensurate with its peculia…
The Root of the Problem: Historical Narrative as Origin, End, and Impasse of Radical Social Change
Although often treated as a controversy between radicals and conservatives, the current public imbroglio concerning so-called identity politics is just as much a matter of disagreement within progressivism’s big tent. Such a dispute is especially pronounced between classical Marxists and rival radical leftist groups that position race, rather than class, as the central problem facing egalitarian change. Starting from the idea that historical narr…
Reel cruelty: Voyeurism and extra-juridical punishment in true-crime documentaries
This paper takes as its point of departure the newly resurgent controversy about whether the possible civic or pedagogical functions of true-crime documentaries outweigh the harm they are occasionally known to inflict. Although supporters of true-crime documentaries tend to downplay their potential to create or exacerbate trauma, their arguments, like those of the subgenre’s critics, presuppose that trauma functions as an unwanted byproduct. This…
What Makes an Orc? Racial Cosmos and Emergent Narrative in World of Warcraft
This article offers a new method of reading racial narrative in massive multiplayer online games. Rather than looking to the game text or the behaviors of individual players, it focuses on collective emergent behavior and demographics. From this perspective, the various racial group in World of Warcraft (WoW) take on their on unique characteristics that inform the broader WoW narrative. These differences result from the collective playing decisio…
Better Never to Have Been: The Unseen Implications
Where We Produce One, We Produce All
Hillary Clinton and Katy Perry drink the blood of murdered children to live forever, Barack Obama and Tom Hanks participate in the sex trafficking and molestation of children, and a cabal of Satan worshippers control global events from behind the scenes. This is the central, animating idea behind QAnon, a right-wing populist conspiracy theory that has achieved a level of saturation in American and global politics (in)commensurate with its peculia…
Better Never to Have Been: The Unseen Implications
Reel cruelty: Voyeurism and extra-juridical punishment in true-crime documentaries
This paper takes as its point of departure the newly resurgent controversy about whether the possible civic or pedagogical functions of true-crime documentaries outweigh the harm they are occasionally known to inflict. Although supporters of true-crime documentaries tend to downplay their potential to create or exacerbate trauma, their arguments, like those of the subgenre’s critics, presuppose that trauma functions as an unwanted byproduct. This…
What Makes an Orc? Racial Cosmos and Emergent Narrative in World of Warcraft
This article offers a new method of reading racial narrative in massive multiplayer online games. Rather than looking to the game text or the behaviors of individual players, it focuses on collective emergent behavior and demographics. From this perspective, the various racial group in World of Warcraft (WoW) take on their on unique characteristics that inform the broader WoW narrative. These differences result from the collective playing decisio…
Better Never to Have Been: The Unseen Implications
What Makes an Orc? Racial Cosmos and Emergent Narrative in World of Warcraft
This article offers a new method of reading racial narrative in massive multiplayer online games. Rather than looking to the game text or the behaviors of individual players, it focuses on collective emergent behavior and demographics. From this perspective, the various racial group in World of Warcraft (WoW) take on their on unique characteristics that inform the broader WoW narrative. These differences result from the collective playing decisio…
The Root of the Problem: Historical Narrative as Origin, End, and Impasse of Radical Social Change
Although often treated as a controversy between radicals and conservatives, the current public imbroglio concerning so-called identity politics is just as much a matter of disagreement within progressivism’s big tent. Such a dispute is especially pronounced between classical Marxists and rival radical leftist groups that position race, rather than class, as the central problem facing egalitarian change. Starting from the idea that historical narr…
Reel cruelty: Voyeurism and extra-juridical punishment in true-crime documentaries
This paper takes as its point of departure the newly resurgent controversy about whether the possible civic or pedagogical functions of true-crime documentaries outweigh the harm they are occasionally known to inflict. Although supporters of true-crime documentaries tend to downplay their potential to create or exacerbate trauma, their arguments, like those of the subgenre’s critics, presuppose that trauma functions as an unwanted byproduct. This…
Where We Produce One, We Produce All
Hillary Clinton and Katy Perry drink the blood of murdered children to live forever, Barack Obama and Tom Hanks participate in the sex trafficking and molestation of children, and a cabal of Satan worshippers control global events from behind the scenes. This is the central, animating idea behind QAnon, a right-wing populist conspiracy theory that has achieved a level of saturation in American and global politics (in)commensurate with its peculia…
History at the end of the world: Decolonial revisionism in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok
From 19th-century novels to contemporary computer-animated adventure films, popular media culture provides no shortage of representations that subserve colonialist attitudes and perspectives. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) provides a rare decolonial fantasy, which is especially surprising given that it does so through the veneer of the big-budget superhero film. Registering a deep concern with public memory, the film spotlights and challenges the various …
American Conservatism Unmoored
The last decade witnessed a drastic reconfiguration of American conservatism by way of a newly emergent and energized dissident right. Beyond the question of ideology, this article argues that an essential aspect of this realignment occurs at the level of strategy, specifically with the adoption of agitational tactics pioneered by the progressive left. It attempts to make sense of this sea change, first, by tracing in broad strokes the history of…
The White Knight: Batman as esoteric hero for the dissident right
This paper examines how white-nationalist and identitarian fan communities read The Dark Knight film series as a coded attack on liberal values by the secretly sympathetic writer-director Christopher Nolan. In a classic esoteric reading, white nationalists posit super villains like Ra's al Ghul and Bane as giving voice to the true message of the trilogy, namely, that liberal countries have become decadent and must be destroyed so as to give rise …
Writing for Machines, Formatting Originality: Plagiarism Detection and the Automation of Authorship
This article examines the institutional, technical, and ontological consequences of plagiarism detection platforms on contemporary academic writing. It argues that services like Turnitin and Grammarly do not simply detect plagiarism but actively reconfigure what counts as authorship, originality, and intellectual integrity. Drawing on historical and media-theoretical perspectives, the article traces plagiarism’s emergence as a culturally continge…
Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Media studies (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works)