Essay by Natalia Mohar Art by Alex Hoang Monstrosity can be defined as “[s]omething repulsively unnatural, an abomination; a thing which is outrageously or offensively wrong” (OED, monstrosity 2a), but how does something come to be considered so abnormal and wrong as to become monstrous? Jack Halberstam claims that “[t]he monster functions as a monster
TagAcademic Essay
The Intricacies of Indian Experience: A Survey of Post-Colonial Commentary through Transpositional Adaptation in Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice
Essay by Sim Deol Art by Margaret Xun In her Bollywood-inspired Austen adaptation, Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice reveals that even the most English of narratives can be transformed in order to celebrate cultures that have been affected by British colonization. Austen’s original text, Pride and Prejudice, is deeply entrenched in a colonial context, even
The Feeble Feminine: Cleopatra’s Transformation into a Passive Woman and the Defense of Louise de Kérouaille in John Dryden’s All for Love
Essay by Sim Deol Art by Adri Marcano Cleopatra has come to be a figure often regarded in popular culture as beautiful, intelligent, and above all, powerful. This understanding of her character is consistent with her representation in Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. On the other hand, Dryden’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s narrative, All for Love,
Traversing the Temporal and Celestial Realms: Parentheses as a Device in Milton’s Paradise Lost
Essay by Nicole Sobolewski Art by Paula Mohar Crafting a religious narrative while accurately capturing its complexity in regards to time and space can be a difficult endeavour. How does a writer articulate the depth of the Christian God in a manner that is understandable for humans and aligns with earthly understandings of temporality? In
Metaphor as Medicine: The Power of Figurative Language to Aid Survival and Healing in Madeleine Thien’s Dogs at the Perimeter
Essay by Louise Cham Art by Keira Innes In his book Lived Refuge: Gratitude, Resentment, Resilience, critical refugee studies scholar Vinh Nguyen notes that “[f]or many refugees, matters of life and death hang on a single narrative” (xvi). As a determining factor for obtaining political rights and protection lies in how their lived experience of
On Cundrie and Christine de Pizan: Proclamations of the Wild Feminine, and a Call Towards “Advocating Pure Truth”
Essay by Sophia Bucior Art by Alex Hoang Imagine a sorceress. Imagine her clothing, her hair, her features. Imagine her voice, imagine the words she uses, imagine the purpose behind her words. Imagine wherever it is she comes from — is it far away, or near? Imagine others’ reactions to the sorceress — are they
When Snow Falls into the Caribbean Sea: The Intertwinement of Colonial and Personal Histories in Jamaica Kincaid’s Garden
Essay by Gurleen K. Kulaar Art by Adri Marcano “What to do?” asks Jamaica Kincaid (11). Throughout her autobiographical-botanical text, My Garden (Book):, Kincaid contends with the happiness, vexations, and “series of doubts upon series of doubts” (14-15) she encounters in her garden, grappling with settler colonial legacies as well as personal nostalgias embedded in
Kapok Vocal Cords: Y-Dang Troeung’s Landbridge as Cambodian Memory Work
Essay by M. Chiao Art by Nicole Ma Obscured by Western journalists’ documentation and filmmaking of South-East Asia’s various war during the Cold War era, narratives of the Cambodian genocide often center around trauma, violence, and Western heroism. Many of these narratives act in opposition to its advertised intent, displacing Cambodian experience in lieu of
Overreaching Animals: Hateful Hybridity in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene
Essay by Katy Lau Art by Natalia Mohar Spenser’s The Faerie Queene has its fair share of typical animal-human hybrids. From Error, to Duessa, to the transformed men in the Bower of Bliss, its pages overflow with human characters that are physically part animal or strongly associated with animal motifs. The hybridity of these characters
The importance of music to Black identity and the vitality of ownership in determining music’s significance in David Chariandy’s Brother
Essay by Audrey Kruger Art by Adri Marcano When discussing White supremacy, many only consider the United States and wrongfully exempt Canada from the issue of systematic racial prejudice. In fact, a plethora of scholarship has been published addressing the embodied experiences of Black immigrants in Canada, including Robyn Maynard’s discussion on state-sanctioned violence and
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”: Deleuze’s Societies of Control and the Desire for Autonomy in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Essay by Hana Kovar Art by J. Sassi Guil: Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are… condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one – that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it’ll just be a shambles: at least, let us
Rejecting rotting humanness: The ecofeminist abject in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian
Essay by Emily Mao Art by Natalia Mohar Han Kang’s The Vegetarian uncovers the grotesque and poignant truths of gendered violence and resistance. The story follows Yeong-hye, a Korean housewife who embarks on a journey departing from a patriarchal, hierarchical, and humancentric rendering of humanness that seeks to erase female subjectivity. As she resorts to
“I” to Eye: Inclined Subjectivity and Feminine Vision in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
Essay by Anna Pontin Art by Alex Hoang In 1928, one year after the publication of To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf wrote and delivered a series of feminist lectures that would become her most famous work. Later published as A Room of One’s Own, her essay on “Women and the Novel” closes with a biting
Asia Ex Machina
Essay by Avery Man Art by Adri Marcano In her revolutionary feminist essay A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, Donna Haraway posits the political myth of the cyborg whose hybridity of machine and organism, and of reality and fiction, blurs the functions of “mind, body, and tool” (165). Adopting
A Digital Queer Utopia: Full-Metal Indigiqueer
Essay by Royce Uy Art by Karen Zhang Joshua Whitehead’s poetry collection, Full-Metal Indigiqueer, retells experiences of erotic kinship, internalized trauma, and the haunting against Indigenous peoples to animate a nuanced selfhood of queer Indigeneity: the Indigiqueer. According to Belcourt, discourses of reconciliation are often masculine, silencing queer and feminized voices beneath a dominant focus