Tag: Literary Criticism

“Our core values are incredibly resilient”: An interview with Christopher Pexa

December 15, 2020

This week the Modern Language Association announced that it has awarded The MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, or Languages to University of Minnesota Press author Christopher Pexa. The award will be presented at the Association’s virtual convention on January 9, 2021.  The committee’s citation reads:  Christopher J. Pexa’s Translated Nation: Rewriting … More “Our core values are incredibly resilient”: An interview with Christopher Pexa

Growing Up in Westeros: Breaking the Wheel of Fantasy Expectations

May 22, 2019

BY MARIA SACHIKO CECIRE The tendency to set up—and then dash—the expectations of fantasy has always been crucial to HBO’s Game of Thrones and its source novels by George R. R. Martin. (I refer to them collectively below as GoT.) From the beheading of Ned Stark to the slaughter at the Red Wedding, much of … More Growing Up in Westeros: Breaking the Wheel of Fantasy Expectations

Fashioning Feminism: On Bodies of Information.

January 25, 2019

BY ELIZABETH LOSHWilliam & Mary What does a bulletproof dress prototype have to do with the digital humanities? A lot actually, according to artist micha cárdenas. Such a garment, which was crafted from Kevlar airbags scavenged from a junkyard, could be capable of stopping a 9mm bullet. It’s one of the objects featured in the … More Fashioning Feminism: On Bodies of Information.

Frankenstein and anonymous authorship in eighteenth-century Britain.

January 18, 2019

BY MARK VARESCHIUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison Having celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2018, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is perhaps one of the most well-known novels of the early nineteenth century. While many are familiar with Shelley’s classic novel and can immediately picture some version of the work’s iconic monster, few are aware that when Frankenstein was first … More Frankenstein and anonymous authorship in eighteenth-century Britain.

On Jeff VanderMeer and material monsters: Did we ever know anything about the world at all?

November 2, 2018

BY BENJAMIN J. ROBERTSONUniversity of Colorado Boulder In None of This is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer, I focus on the fantastic materialities VanderMeer creates in his major fiction: the Veniss milieu, in which a good portion of his early fiction takes place; the city of Ambergris, which takes shape in City of Saints … More On Jeff VanderMeer and material monsters: Did we ever know anything about the world at all?

On David Wojnarowicz, politics, and gestures.

July 3, 2018

BY LISA DIEDRICHProfessor of women’s and gender studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook Next week, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will launch a major exhibition of the work of David Wojnarowicz, “History Keeps Me Awake at Night.” It notes that Wojnarowicz was “queer and HIV-positive” and an “impassioned … More On David Wojnarowicz, politics, and gestures.

On truthiness and trustworthiness: Why nonfiction is best defined as a literature of questions.

February 8, 2018

BY JOE SUTLIFF SANDERSUniversity of Cambridge It’s a cliché that by the time one finishes writing a book, one hates it. Well, I have just finished a book—A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child—and if it’s not quite true that I hate it, it’s certainly true that this book continues to cause me … More On truthiness and trustworthiness: Why nonfiction is best defined as a literature of questions.