On Sunday, Black Panther made history as the first superhero movie with a Best Picture Oscar nomination. And though it didn’t win that one, the film did win the most Oscars in the history of superhero movies. Given those historic firsts, and the inevitable onslaught of superhero movies that 2019 will bring, we're revisiting one of the first episodes from the podcast. Professor and comic book fan Ramzi Fawaz joined us to talk about origin stories, the X-Men, and what the queerness of the original mutant family can tell us about comic book heroes today.

Go beyond the episode:

• Ramzi Fawaz's The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics
• Read his essays “Notes on Wonder Woman” and “The Difference a Mutant Makes”
• Watch the trailers for The New Mutants and Dark Phoenix, both coming out this summer
• Read the case that William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, makes for superheroes—and “Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics”
• Check out our interview with lifelong nerd and critic A. D. Jameson on how geek culture entered the mainstream in the ultimate “Revenge of the Nerds”

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.

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