Editor's Introduction

I write this note on the twenty-year anniversary of 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. I was a graduate student then, and I remember the solemnity of acknowledging that I was witnessing a history unfurl that I never imagined. The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 will always bookend the beginning of the twenty-first century. Since that day, we have witnessed exponential development in technology, including the invention of the smart phone and social media platforms. Together, they revolutionized on a global scale the way we communicate with one another and became a vehicle for social justice movements including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and MeToo. We witnessed rapid climate change and environmental disasters that revealed startling global wealth disparities. In the U.S., Hurricane Katrina overpowered the levees in New Orleans' Ninth Ward and uncovered the failures of our infrastructure and of racist policies at the local...