April 29, 2019
Walking the Void: The Divided World of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance
The narrator of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Miles Coverdale (and Hawthorne himself as his preface shows), inhabits the space between the internal world of the writer and the external […]
April 25, 2019
Playing Dungeons & Dragons With Your Creative Writing Class
When one of my students presented on Dungeons & Dragons in class, he showed us the endless pages he had amassed in character and plot development. Then, it hit me […]
April 24, 2019
Animal Rights Versus Human Rights: Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, Paula Casal’s “Animals and Accommodation,” and David Hume’s “Of Justice”
In “Animals and Accommodation,” Paula Casal stresses that she is not an anti-speciest. According to her definition of the term, neither Anna Sewell nor David Hume would fit this description either. […]
April 21, 2019
Jordan Peele’s Us Exposes America’s Shadow Self
This is the first in my new series, American Gothic: Investigating Horror, Ghosts, Monsters, & Haunted Houses. Stay tuned for more… After Jordan Peele’s movie Us introduces the Wilson family […]
April 12, 2019
“Rape is Not Just a Girl Problem”: A Conversation With Melissa Ostrom
Melissa Ostrom has written two YA novels, The Beloved Wild (Feiwel & Friends, March 2018) and Unleaving (Feiwel & Friends, March 2019). Her writing has also appeared in The Florida […]
April 4, 2019
Putting at Issue the Very Subject of Language: A Conversation With Julie Tetel
Julie Tetel has made a career out of studying the structures of human connection, whether it be through her many romance novels or her celebrated scholarly works on linguistics. Tetel […]
March 18, 2019
Making the Familiar Strange: A Conversation With Wendy Chin-Tanner
Wendy Chin-Tanner has published two poetry books with Sibling Rivalry Press, Turn (2014), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards, and Anyone Will Tell You (April 2019). She […]
March 12, 2019
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King
In Idylls of the King, Alfred, Lord Tennyson strives to bring the vitality of life to the legend of King Arthur. He seeks to convey a story so ancient it has […]
March 5, 2019
Gertrude Stein’s “Composition as Explanation”
The title of Gertrude Stein’s essay, “Composition as Explanation,” ostensibly contradicts her literary scheme of raising form to the level of content. The name seems to imply that this piece […]
March 1, 2019
Re-Reading Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland
Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland was written just ten years after the United States Constitution, and its story spans the time period between the French-Indian War and the American Revolution. The […]
February 18, 2019
Multimedia Creative Writing and Having Students Teach Students
This week in my experimental creative writing class, we learned about using Twine, a tool for creating interactive, nonlinear stories. Fans of hypertext writing will enjoy this open-source method for […]
February 12, 2019
How To Be An Adjunct Professor
1. As you will most likely not have an office, it’s wise to learn now how to pitch a sturdy tent or erect a yurt. 2. It also helps to […]