The College of Arts and Sciences presents the Spring 2026 Scholar Teacher Lecture, "The Hunger Games and Gen Z Politics" by Professor Anthony "Jack" Gierzynski.

During their adolescence the Millennial Generation had Harry Potter; Gen Z had Katniss, Tris, and Thomas. Millennials spent many hours during their impressionable years of political socialization immersed in Harry’s “wonderous world.” The fictional world that transported many members of Gen Z during their youth were the much darker worlds of the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner series. This talk will focus on the research question, what role did these popular authoritarian-dystopian stories play in the political development of Gen Z?

Anthony “Jack” Gierzynski is a professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, where he has been a faculty member since 1992. He has published five books, the most recent of which, The Political Effects of Entertainment media: How Fictional Worlds Affect Real World Political Perspectives and Harry Potter and the Millennials, report on research conducted in collaboration with students in his classes. His most recent article, “The Euphoria Effect: A Popular HBO Show, Gen Z, and Drug Policy Beliefs,” was a collaborative project with students of the 2022 Political Science Honors Seminar and was published in Social Science Quarterly.