December 4, 2017
Better Things and Silenced Women
The second season of Better Things recently came to a close and, although it did so memorably with a multi-daughter dance performance, I want to focus on the distinctive second-to-last […]
November 28, 2017
Why I Love “Low” Art
Where to begin with why I have always valued entertainment considered (by snobs, let’s be honest) to be “lowbrow”? For one thing, this preference led me to my dissertation. I […]
November 20, 2017
How To Be a Writer in 25 Easy Steps
1) Use “journal” as a verb. 2) Invest in a good fedora. 3) Loudly and frequently recommend that everyone you meet “journal.” 4) Self-publish and make everyone come to at […]
November 8, 2017
Tabloid Art History Rewrites Artistic Cannon
Recent posts in Flavorwire and A.V. Club brought my attention to an intriguing Twitter account, Tabloid Art History, run by Elise Bell, Chloe Esslemont, and Mayanne Soret, which has actually […]
November 6, 2017
Motherhood as a Form of Haunting
Every Halloween I like to ponder how we’re all haunted houses, attended always by the ghosts of future and past, misunderstood monsters, mad women in our own attics. As a […]
October 26, 2017
Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties: The Mad Woman in the Attic and the Abject-Mother-Baby-in-the-Basement
Although not all the stories in Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties reach the accumulative electricity of its first tale, “The Husband Stitch,” this is not uncommon in […]
October 18, 2017
Me Too and the Trauma Narrative
I’ve spent the past days watching two little words that tell-and-don’t-tell so much wander, liberated at last, largely comma-free, through the raw expanse of shared trauma that is my Facebook-feed. […]
October 11, 2017
Blade Runner 2049, Poetry, and Electric Sheep
In undertaking Blade Runner 2049, a sequel to Ridley Scott’s much-theorized 1982 cult classic Blade Runner, director Denis Villeneuve had some big shoes to fill. His shrewd move was […]
October 7, 2017
Pop Quiz: What Kind of Novel Are You?
1. In your favorite novel, the main character’s name is: A) Arabella Featherstone B) Luther Impossibilius C) Jake Amnesty D) The same as the author’s 2. In your favorite novel, […]
September 29, 2017
The Gothic Literary Roots of Darren Aronofsky’s mother!
Even if you never laid eyes on Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, you could still get lost for days surfing the labyrinthine links of think pieces that have erupted since it hit […]
September 20, 2017
Film as Poetry’s Modern Sister Art
People often ask me why I think poetry and film go together like peanut butter and jelly, and I say, “Well, it’s kind of like that Videodrome interview,” and they […]
September 15, 2017
Reading Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark After Charlottesville
As someone who teaches literature post-Charlottesville (and everything else), I felt it was an important time to revisit Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination […]