Episode 133: Mission Impossible: The Reckoningest Pod Ever with Justin Rawlins and Craig Bruce Smith

This week Justin Rawlins and Craig Bruce Smith drop in to talk about Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning and their thoughts on the MI franchise. 

Justin Rawlins, Ph.D., is an associate professor of media studies and film studies, and the author of “Imagining the Method” (University of Texas Press, 2024). His research peels back the layers of film/media cultures to elucidate the ideological work that screen texts (e.g., films, TV programs, performers, stars, influencers) do as they radiate out of the culture industries and circulate through our everyday lives. Rawlins new research examines how our ideas of screen acting and actors are becoming part of discussions around, promotions of, and experiments with “AI” and performers both living and deceased.

Craig Bruce Smith is Professor of History at National Defense University in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) in Norfolk, VA. He authored American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era and co-authored George Washington’s Lessons in Ethical Leadership.

Smith earned his PhD in American history from Brandeis University. Previously, he was an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), an assistant professor of history, and the director of the history program at William Woods University, and he has taught at additional colleges, including Tufts University. He specializes in American Revolutionary and early American history, specifically focusing on George Washington, honor, ethics, war, the founders, transnational ideas, and national identity. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, and early American cultural, intellectual, and political history.