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
TagAcademic Essay
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 […]
‘“To water a mandrake”: Corrupted conversions of the body of Christ in the necrobotany of John Webster’s The White Devil’ By Aiden Tait
From the profane transformation of the body of the hanged man at the gallows into the body of the crucified Christ to the tainting of the Eucharist in the consumption of the body and blood of the dead, this paper intends to explore how examining the use of necrobotanicals through this lens of corrupted conversion offers a new perspective into Webster’s complex relationship with religious rituals in The White Devil […]
“Failed legacies of feeling: Racial melancholia and fragile subjects of queer intimacy in Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night (2016)” By Amanda Wan
In Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night, queerness circulates through the aesthetics of failure and fragility within the Cho family, and the losses that they desire and grieve as racialized and classed subjects. Racial melancholia, as formulated by David L. Eng and Shinhee Han, circulates between members of the family as traces of emotional maps […]
“When Tongues Replace Swords: Somatic Transgression and Its Shifting Performance in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy” By Ana Maria Fernandez
The early modern tragic stage added to its cast of players the unruly member of the tongue. Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy all dramatize the tongue’s power to transgress the boundaries of the body and interfere with bodily integrity […]
“Beauty and Orientalism in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters” By Mike Yuan
Published posthumously in 1763, Turkish Embassy Letters gives a detailed account of Montagu’s observations of Turkey and raises insightful critiques of Orientalism […]
“Metaphor, Metonymy, and Metanarrative Space: Negotiations of Truth in a Vlog ” By Josephine Hass
Questions about the role of truth, authenticity, meaning, and authorial intent are not new to art and art criticism, yet the upswell of new forms made possible by new technologies cast these questions in a new light […]
“Queering Contemporary Art: Death and Grieving” By Ariel Elise
The death and mourning of a loved one is an experience that is not exclusive to conventionally prescribed groups of people […]