Unsex Me Here: How Removing Markers of Eroticism Alters the Status of the Female Nude
Unsex Me Here: How Removing Markers of Eroticism Alters the Status of the Female Nude

Atop a pile of boulders, an unclothed figure sits at the base of a tree. The tree’s upper branch reaches across the top part of the frame—the curve of the bough mimicked in the hunched shoulders of the human shape. The figure, with limbs folded so as to obscure their identity, blends in with the background rocks in both color and size. The stones dominate the composition; there is but a hint of geographical space suggested on the right side of the arrangement through a small, light, triangular shape indicative of a mountain in the distance. Although the figure is nude, the human body is not sexed, an important fact once we learn the shape is a woman.

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Archives, Issue XIIIContent EditorsComment
The Dead Walking Behind Us: Queer 'Elegy,' Classical Eros, and Desire as Translation in Oscar Wilde and A.E. Housman
The Dead Walking Behind Us: Queer 'Elegy,' Classical Eros, and Desire as Translation in Oscar Wilde and A.E. Housman

By Kit Pyne-Jaeger, Cornell University

Using Anne Carson's characterization of classical "eros as lack" in Eros the Bittersweet, this paper will explore the queer resonance of depictions of eros directed at an inaccessible or unresponsive love object in Wilde and Housman's poetics, focusing specifically on the positioning of death as a component of, rather than an obstacle to, eros.

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Issue XIIContent Editorsoscar wilde, queer, Tennyson, Victorian, eros, A. E. Housman, queer theory, classic, LGBTQ+, Oscar Wilde
Was One Franc Enough to ‘Buy Your Way In’ to the Belle Epoque?
Was One Franc Enough to ‘Buy Your Way In’ to the Belle Epoque?

By Xavier Reader, The University of Western Australia

La Belle Epoque — translated as the good times or the beautiful era — was a phenomenon that took place throughout pre-war Western Europe, but is no better preserved than in metropolitan Paris, where the feeling and conceptualisation of Belle Epoque existed in a highly concentrated form.

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Issue XIIContent EditorsBolero, France, dance, class, literature, history, politicsComment
The Use and Abuse of Philosophy in History: James Warley Miles and the Dangers of Racist Dehistoricization
The Use and Abuse of Philosophy in History: James Warley Miles and the Dangers of Racist Dehistoricization

By Patrick Wohlscheid, College of Charleston

Over the course of his life, the prominent South Carolina philosopher James Warley Miles addressed students at the College of Charleston at least three times: general commencements in 1851 and 1863, and a Chrestomathic Society commencement in 1874, one year before Miles' death.

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Issue XIIContent Editorsrace, history, philosophy, literature, historiography, injusticeComment
“The Real Jews”: Defining Israeli Identity in Politics and Cinema
“The Real Jews”: Defining Israeli Identity in Politics and Cinema

By Sophia Hernandez Tragesser, University of St. Thomas

In 1933, a Zionist film crew produced a cornerstone Israeli film, Oded Hanoded, depicting a child’s adventures in the Jezreel Valley at the forefront of Jewish civilization amidst Arab Bedouins. This film embodied the Zionist struggle for an ethno-religious homeland by presenting strong European-Jewish characters engaged in a life-and-death battle for survival against hostile land.

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Issue XIIContent EditorsJews, Israel, politics, racism, film, peformance, stereotypes, inequality, war, migration, cinemaComment
Unconventional Mothers and Absent Fathers in Latin American Films
Unconventional Mothers and Absent Fathers in Latin American Films

By Arianna Tartaglia, Fairfield University

Complex female characters are few and far between in Hollywood blockbusters, and those representations often come scantily clad as objects for the masculine gaze rather than as figures for women to relate to. The traditional male lens of Hollywood commercial film has influenced the cinematic representation of women, especially when it comes to female character portrayal and development.

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Issue XIContent EditorsLatin America, Hollywood, television, film, women, family, children, representation, stereotypes, fatherhoodComment
Saturday Night Lear: "SNL” Cast as Today's Shakespearian Fools
Saturday Night Lear: "SNL” Cast as Today's Shakespearian Fools

By Jack Wolfram, Emory University

Recently finishing its forty-fifth season, NBC’s live television variety show Saturday Night Live (SNL) has developed a reputation for disregarding the comedic boundary “lines” that are rarely crossed when discussing certain issues concerning the sociopolitical world, current events, and pop culture. Over the past several years, SNL casts predominately focus the majority of their satirical skits and sketches on the inherent character of powerful, high-profile entities. Due to the live broadcast nature of the show, SNL actors are notorious for taking full advantage of this unique comedic platform where very little dialogue is censored. These comics’ performances every Saturday night resonate far beyond the simple guffaws of entertainment.

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Issue XIContent Editorstelevision, late-night, show, Shakespeare, King Lear, SNL, classic, literature, fool, First FolioComment
Johann Sebastian Bach and the Style Galant: Progressive Elements in the Italian Concerto

By Maggie Lu, University of British Columbia

As one of the most preeminent composers of the early eighteenth-century, Johann Sebastian Bach is associated most strongly with the height of the Baroque Era. Intricate polyphony and harmonic complexity remained defining characteristics of his style even toward the end of his life – features that were at times the subject of criticism from his own contemporaries. However, despite the view that Bach remained committed to the musical styles of the past during the emergence of the style galant, opuses from the composer’s mid-to-late career suggest that he was both capable and willing to adopt elements of the new fashion into select compositions.

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Issue XIContent Editorsmusic, composers, Bach, classic, art, composition, concerto, style, musicalityComment
A Case Study of Small Press Success in "The Rumpus" and "McSweeney’s": How Valuing Experimental Work and the Avant-Garde Generates Community
A Case Study of Small Press Success in "The Rumpus" and "McSweeney’s": How Valuing Experimental Work and the Avant-Garde Generates Community

By Tamiya Anderson, Pfeiffer University

The publishing industry is in a time of continuous change. Small presses, or independent publishing houses, sustain an independent or fully staffed publishing team that manages a smaller enterprise than big-name publishers. As the industry moves in a direction that endures several transitions and developments, this paper works to catalog the efforts of certain small presses in this time of technological, operational, and structural flux. Since the fifteenth-century development of the printing press, the publishing industry has endured several core operational shifts.

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Issue XIContent Editorspublishing, modernist, experimentalism, magazine, literature, avante-gardeComment
The Principles of Trauma Informed Care in the Context of Childhood Domestic Violence
The Principles of Trauma Informed Care in the Context of Childhood Domestic Violence

By Shefali Golchha, NMIMS University, Mumbai

With the global discussion surrounding human rights constantly expanding, people express continued concern about their own safety, vulnerability, and agency. This is reflected in the number of crimes against children, women, and minorities that surface each day and the scholarly work that is derived from these experiences. Patricia Uberoi, known for studying family, marriage, and kinship systems in India, mentions that, while the family is imagined as a safe space, it is also a site of exploitation and violence.

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Issue XIContent Editorschildren, human rights, India, violence, trauma, culture, feminism, methodComment
A Battle, Two Buildings, and One City During the Crusades
A Battle, Two Buildings, and One City During the Crusades

By Lauren Wilbur, the University of Texas at Austin

Historical archaeology attempts to understand cultures of antiquity by studying written primary sources in conjunction with archaeological analysis. The Crusades present a challenge in using this method because many physical spaces have not been excavated due to political strife, or they had only been excavated in a biblical context with little regard to any other period. However, the discipline has recently started to see some success in the areas that the Latin Christians occupied and material evidence is more readily available to fill in the holes of Crusader history.

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Issue XIContent Editorsarcheaology, history, architecture, Christianity, Muslim, Crusades, environment, religion, warComment
Misunderstood: A Cultural History of Eating Disorders in the West 
Misunderstood: A Cultural History of Eating Disorders in the West 

By Meera Shanbhag, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN

Over 30 million people in the United States are plagued by eating disorders, with at least one death related to eating disorders occurring every 62 minutes.[1] These serious illnesses, which have the greatest mortality rate of any psychological disorder, are characterized by abnormal eating patterns.

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V10 Featured, Issue XContent Editorseating disorder, society, stereotypes, history, culture, science, biology, anorexiaComment
“I Deserve Everything”: The Role of Confidence in 21st Century Women’s Sports 
“I Deserve Everything”: The Role of Confidence in 21st Century Women’s Sports 

By Sabeehah Ravat, University of South Florida

Professional sport is one of the most highly consumed entertainment products in the world, making it both an accessible and unstable foundation for engaging in activism and championing sociopolitical change. Throughout its history, the foundation of heteropatriarchal white supremacy that sports is built on has been challenged, renegotiated, and reinforced.

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Issue XContent Editorssports, entertainment, women, gender, change, inequality, sexuality, race, LGBTQ+, athletes, queerComment
Free Markets or Free People: Amos A. Lawrence and the Limits of the Abolitionist Movement
Free Markets or Free People: Amos A. Lawrence and the Limits of the Abolitionist Movement

By Catherine Devlin, Boston University, Boston, MA

Turning points make for appealing narratives. It’s satisfying to be able to point to a moment and say, “There. That’s when it all changed.” Amos Adams Lawrence (1814-1886), Bostonian textile merchant, indulged his inner story-teller when he described such a turning point, a moment of total reinvention, in a letter to his uncle: “We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad abolitionists.”

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Issue XContent Editorsmovement, abolition, racism, slavery, change, ideology, stereotypes, Amos LawrenceComment
The State’s Construction of Subjectivity: A Literary Analysis of the Contemporary Narco-Novel Perra Brava
The State’s Construction of Subjectivity: A Literary Analysis of the Contemporary Narco-Novel Perra Brava

By Carla Graciano, Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Perra Brava, written by Orfa Alarcón, is a Mexican narco-novel that will act as the focal point of this essay. Perra most often translates to bitch or female dog, and most of the time, women are the ones who are on the receiving end of this epithet.

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Issue XContent Editorsnovel, Mexico, literature, politics, women, drugs, government, identityComment
“What is this thing, Lord?”: Matthew O’Connor and the Queer Theology of the Catholic Church in Nightwood (1937)
“What is this thing, Lord?”: Matthew O’Connor and the Queer Theology of the Catholic Church in Nightwood (1937)

By Olivia Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The modernist novel Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) is a celebration of difference. Published in 1937,[1] it precociously spotlights the voices of those who are often marginalized: homosexuals, women, Jews, starving artists, political activists, the working class.[2] The story focuses on a lesbian love triangle in Paris:

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Editorial, Issue XContent Editorsmodernist, queer, queer theory, history, LGBTQ+, Catholicism, literature, culture, gender, ChristianityComment
The Matter of the Mind in Mrs. Dalloway: How Woolf Reveals Gender Performativity Before Butler Reveals the Term 
The Matter of the Mind in Mrs. Dalloway: How Woolf Reveals Gender Performativity Before Butler Reveals the Term 

Judith Butler, in her work “Gender Trouble,” insists on a need for a radial philosophical movement towards the understanding that gendered experience is internalized due to compulsory gender actions and conventions, which pursue a completely derived and ultimately unachievable ideal. 

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Archives, Issue IXContent EditorsVirginia Woolf, literature, novel, author, gender, theory, womenComment
Social Media and the Power to Effect Change: The Impact of the Digital Landscape on Achieving Equity Within Art Museum Leadership and Visitorship
Social Media and the Power to Effect Change: The Impact of the Digital Landscape on Achieving Equity Within Art Museum Leadership and Visitorship

Art museums in the United States are not exempt from the current social and political divisiveness of our times. Recent events within the art world have revealed a call to action for museums to no longer be neutral institutions, but instead take a more active role in promoting social justice narratives, being the redistribution of power, influence, and value,[1]in order to maintain relevance within society and resolve a historic lack of diversity.

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Archives, Issue IXContent Editorsart, museum, politics, social media, representation, equity, diversityComment