Battling bad guys. High-tech hideouts. The gratitude of the masses. Who at some point in their life hasn't dreamed of being a superhero? Impossible, right? Or is it?

Possessing no supernatural powers, Batman is the most realistic of all the superheroes. His feats are achieved through rigorous training and mental discipline, and with the aid of fantastic gadgets. Drawing on his training as a neuroscientist, kinesiologist, and martial artist, E. Paul Zehr explores the question: Could a mortal ever become Batman?

On today’s episode, portal: Libraries and the Academy chats with Harvard librarian Elizabeth Szkirpan, whose new article looks at how academic libraries can develop metrics to translate library service into key institutional performance indicators.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging and evolving amid intense global competition. Geopolitics of AI examines how breakthroughs in AI intersect with great-power rivalry, military competition, economic statecraft, and competing models of governance—and how those dynamics will shape the development and use of AI itself.

Richard Gabri discusses his new ELH article, revealing intertextual evidence that enigmatic antihero Jay Gatsby is modeled on a Conrad character, suggesting new dimensions to Fitzgerald's construction of race in The Great Gatsby.

Project MUSE, in collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, announces a new landmark in the Museum’s longstanding Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 (ECG) series: ECG volumes I-IV are now fully searchable, open access digital publications freely available to everyone around the world.