Essay by Haylee Kopfensteiner Art by Aiza Bragg Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott” has inspired countless artistic interpretations. One such interpretation is John William Waterhouse’s 1894 painting The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot. While a popular way of reading Tennyson’s poem is to view the Lady of Shalott as a symbol
TagAcademic Essay
Cyborgs, Simulacra, and the Male Gaze: Deconstructing the Female Body in Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita
Essay by Kaleena Ipema Art by Athena Li The cyberpunk comic series Battle Angel Alita introduces its female protagonist in the form of a detached cyborg head, fractured and abandoned in the dystopian landscape of the Scrapyard. Although bodiless, her chipped facial features and fragmented torso deliberately reveal enough femininity to identify not just a
The Consequences of Technologized Relationality in Klara and the Sun and “The Perfect Match”
Essay by Colby Ballingall Art by Amy Ng Human connection is defined as a “person’s subjective sense of having close and positively experienced relationships with others in the social world” (Seppala et al. 412). Psychologists argue that this connection is essential for health and survival (Seppala et al. 411), building on Maslow’s famous theories that
Conrad and Kincaid: Narratives of Dehumanization and Resistance
Essay by Carson Lamont Art by Luiza Ortiz This essay concerns the representation of the colonized in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the response of the colonized in Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. To what extent does Kincaid in her contemporary vision repel the antiquated settler colonial gaze of Conrad? We are to believe
The Angel of Death: Analyzing Departures from the Chronic Mode of Suffering in David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives
Essay by Audrey Castillo Art by Aiza Bragg Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz is an example of “AIDS literature” (Bradway 256) that traverses the queer consciousness during the American AIDS epidemic. It contains the disembodied voices of a population neglected by its government and murdered through the “internaliz[ation of] society’s hate” (Wojnarowicz 179).
When her “skin dissolved under that gaze”: Reclaiming a Remedial Look in Beloved
Essay by Cicely Williams Art by Miranda Yee As bell hooks notes in her scholarship on the Black gaze, “The politics of slavery, of racialized power relations, were such that the slaves were denied their right to gaze” (115). Quite literally, enslaved persons were often “punished … for looking,” and accordingly, she believes that this
“How vain, without the merit, is the name”: Proper Name Usage Invoking Asian Diaspora in Souvankham Thammavongsa’s How To Pronounce Knife
Essay by Aimee Koristka Art by Amy Ng Proper name usage—both in literature and in real life—creates a clear sense of identity for an individual, allowing for distinct separation from one person and another. They are the manner by which an individual is known. Hence, “[p]roper names can be considered as an interface between individuals
The Persistence of Renaissance Tropes in Literary Representations of Africa and Africans throughout the Eighteenth-Century: An Analysis of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior of Africa
Essay by Dan Miller Art by Luiza Ortiz Africa and Africans have long been the recipients of the West’s (1) collective imaginings. In literature, the geography and the populus of Africa have served as provocative Others constructed by the West to better help the West define itself. In this sense, Africa and Africans have functioned
“Rated PG-13 for Language and Mild Sexual Situations”: The Complicated Question of Sexuality in M.T. Anderson’s Feed
In a society where approximately seventy-three percent of people have essentially unlimited and uninterrupted access to a colossal version of the internet through “the feed” (Anderson 112), one would expect pornography downloads and other interactions with sexually explicit material or services to skyrocket. But M.T. Anderson’s young adult novel Feed lacks direct representations of sex and sexuality altogether, instead only hinting at pleasure-driven sexual relationships rather than demonstrating them outright. […]
Black and Queer Intersectionality in Nella Larsen’s Passing
Personal identity is one of the most complicated aspects of human sociality—the realms in which our identities exist, coexist, and intermingle are often responsible for the ways in which we interact with the world around us. In the twenty-first century, specifically the last decade, concepts of identity formation and intersectionality have been at the forefront of media and scholarship. […]
Alone Together: Friendship in Virginia Woolf’s Flush
A woman and her dog, living through the words of Virginia Woolf, experience the joys and sorrows of friendship—of a friendship that spans the life of that dog from his puppyhood to his last breath and that leaves its mark upon the woman. […]
Don’t Look Back: The Rose-Coloured Nostalgia of Rouge and Happy Together
Nostalgia is a common theme across the Hong Kong cinematic canon, particularly in the New Wave films created during the transition period between the 1984 signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong. This essay will focus on how nostalgia is configured and located in Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1988) and Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997) […]
Racism, Ableism, Exceptionalism, and Imperialism: Jane Eyre as Antifeminist
In “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress,” Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar quote Richard Chase: “Well, obviously Jane Eyre is a feminist tract, an argument for the betterment of governesses and equal rights for women” (338). This essay will argue that the novel is not at all this straightforward, and by some definitions, can be considered antifeminist. […]
The Reimagined (Anti-)Origin Story: Examining Nu Wa’s Diasporic Identity Through Body and Birth
For immigrants of any generation, or members of any underrepresented group, the pressure to define and explain one’s origin or identity is always complicated. In the novel Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai, birth and the body are reframed to justify the difficulties in classifying oneself. Through confronting conventions of birth and the use of shifting bodies, the novel challenges the notion of pure origins. In particular […]
“White Witches and Warrior Beasts: Hierarchical Arrangements of Being and the Fantastical North in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Golden Compass” By Mabon Foo
The fantasy worlds of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass both feature British children exploring mysterious Northern landscapes and encountering non-human and supernatural beings whose cultures and authority challenge British and Christian hierarchical understandings of existence […]