Archives

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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:

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. 

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.

The term “monster” defines an individual who has an unusual or unacceptable behavior or appearance.[1]With this definition, the word is used by society as a label to alienate those who do not fit into its criteria of normalcy.

Se dice que en las guerras todos pierden. Sin embargo, no hay alguna duda  de que existen grupos de personas que pierden más que otros. Este fue el caso de las mujeres a partir de la derrota de los republicanos ante los nacionalistas tras la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939).

Edwin Tran

The rise of militant jihadist organizations in the Middle East is often thought of in simplistic and blanketed terms. Unfortunately, diverse and distinct groups, such as Hezbollah and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, are grouped into a single category, and are often explained in broad terms.

Rosalyn Stilling

Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” is a touchstone of postmodern fairy tale revisions, deftly marrying the latent content of Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” with her entrancing and opulent prose. She boldly addresses the sexuality, gender relations, and biblical comparisons inherent in Perrault’s tale in her prose, particularly by blending allusions to Judeo-Christian figures with sadomasochistic practices. Carter expands upon these elements present in “Bluebeard,” while keeping her focus on the representation of villainous Bluebeard and his abuses towards the innocent bride.

Abigail Robinson

Modernity is a concept, period, idea, etc., that has been explored ad nauseam. Defining it seems to be an impossible task; scholars have been debating when it began and when it ended (if it even ended at all) for at least 100 years.

By Rachael Malstead

Langston Hughes chronicled the spirit, fervor, and intensity of the Harlem Renaissance as only an artist can. In his short story collection, The Ways of White Folks, Hughes concerns himself with the downtrodden, the poor and lonely, the black and oppressed. The transcendent insight into the human condition that crafts this anthology is unique to an author of genius.

By Nicole Corrigan

In the 1960s, the second wave of feminism came crashing over America and led to the criticism of many cultural institutions that had long been bastions of sexism. 

By Laura Stamm

As a fantasy structure, film acts as a privileged medium to conceive of formations, including identity formations, which are otherwise unthinkable under dominant ideology.

By Joseph Witkin

Paul Valéry’s “Philosophy of the Dance” may have ekphrastic potential, but before suggesting that the author’s words give voice to the dance, a strong association between word and the dancer’s image must be formed. 

By Doly Begum

This paper evaluates the problems that commonly plague education systems and policies in  developing nations. 

By Justin Holliday

The first Act of Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill takes place during the Victorian era, a period associated with social repression; this part of the play is set in Africa. 

By Rachael Isom

Hilda Doolittle, more commonly known by the initials H.D., merges classical mythology with personal perception in "Helen," a poetic portrait of the infamous Helen of Troy. 

By Brent Rowley

Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism can be productively read as an historically concrete examination of and response to Heidegger's thought in Being and Time. 

By Brittany Collins 

Charles Chesnutt's collection of stories entitled The Conjure Woman, which involve the telling of past plantation stories by an elderly former slave named Julius McAdoo to a curious white couple named John and Annie, were originally published in 1899.

By Laura Strout

Madness has always fascinated audiences; this is one of the few facts about madness upon which literary critics agree. 

By Mike Strumpf

When the first folio edition of William Shakespeare's works was published in 1623, "it was not clear whose idea the collected volume was or even what was the precise motivation for it" (Proudfoot, Thompson, & Kastan-1998, 8), but the inclusion of two actors that worked with Shakespeare in the publication process underscores the importance of accuracy of authorial intent in the volume.

By Elizabeth Zehl

Works that fall within the genre of bildungsroman chart the "advancement and development of the individual," generally from childhood to, and sometimes through, adulthood (Kunz 2010). 

By Victoria Winfree

For the duration of Randolph College’s fall 2009 semester, visitors to the Maier Museum of Art are treated to a special exhibition, titled “Teaching Begins Here: Recent Works by Randolph College Art Faculty”

By Mariah Sue Redden

After completing work on what would become his masterpiece, Moby-Dick or, the Whale, Herman Melville drafted a letter to friend and fellow author Nathaniel Hawthorne, noting: “I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb” (Coffler 108).  

By Katherine Janson

The Jurymen is an Old Comedy style play fashioned after Aristophanes that discusses the philosophies of ancient thinkers, namely Plato and Aristotle.