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This introduction describes catastrophizing as a kind of storytelling, a way of gathering events into a narrative of continuity and discontinuity that, when skillfully deployed, is an expression of shifts in thought. Beginning with two short stories about the rise and fall of catastrophe theory, which enjoyed brief mainstream popularity in the 1970s, and the liquid blackness journal's own history of exploring catastrophe, this introduction suggests catastrophizing is a self-reflexive scholarly and creative practice. Disciplines tell catastrophic tales to indicate when and where modes of inquiry and their forms of expression start and stop. Black studies, for example, assumes it plays a considerable role at the beginning of the end of the world; as such, the scholarly contributions to ecocriticism, performance studies, computing, queer theory, and abolition studies that appear in this issue are all methodological experiments that begin at "the end." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use a unique data set that includes a panel of all teachers in North Carolina over a 4-year period (1996-1997 through 1999-2000) to describe the distribution of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) across classrooms, schools, and districts. The sorting of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) across students is an important equity issue both because these teachers are thought to be exceptionally qualified teachers and because in North Carolina (and many other states) state-level financial incentives are provided to NBCTs, creating an implicit subsidy to those districts and schools where they are employed. Our findings on the sorting of NBCTs across districts, schools and students reflects the research on the distribution of teacher credentials across students: the most disadvantaged districts, schools, and students are least likely to have access to those teachers who are recognized by NBPTS as being exceptionally qualified teachers.

The article reviews the music video "Tints," by Anderson.Paak featuring Kendrick Lamar.