The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature brings together more than 50 scholars to provide a literary history of the queerness of American literature from its earliest beginnings to 2023. It takes as its remit the intense proximity, entwinement, and even identity between queerness and American literature. When the American literary scholar Eric Savoy asked […]
Read MoreWhat do you feel when you look at something beautiful? Take this honeysuckle pattern, copied from a Greek vase. As your eyes trace its symmetrical curves, can you feel your “two lungs draw in a long breath”? Do those inhalations give you a “sense of expansion,” or a “vague feeling of harmony”? How about your […]
Read MoreThe literature of the Third Indochina War has been dominated by journalists and political scientists, particularly international relations specialist with an interest in Asia and/or Indochina writing during the duration of the conflict. Like all contemporary accounts, they are very much dependent on open sources and media reports with very limited access to archival sources, […]
Read MoreLGBTQ+ rights are under attack around the country. In just the first six months of 2024, state legislators introduced 527 bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community. The situation is so dire that the Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans. Although these legal attacks are painful and dispiriting, the LGBTQ+ movement’s […]
Read MoreAnyone who has ever watched the Six Nations in Rugby or the World Cup in Football probably is familiar with the sentiment of beating a neighbouring country or rival brings among the faithful. What these competitions show is how overcoming a detested neighbour in head-to-head contests can provide incomparable feelings of victory. Is this feeling […]
Read MoreBlog #5 of the Psychology and its Antecedents series As we look to the launch of a new year – a clean slate to create happiness – a review of the year just finishing seems to have exacted a toll through considerable swings in emotional experience. Certainly, all of us as individuals experienced joys and […]
Read MoreIt’s always difficult to step outside one’s comfort zone. In the case of this book, the process of getting ready to step outside took a decade. This may seem unreasonably long, since the step did not even involve much of a shift—really from a study of chamber music in Vienna around 1800 to a study […]
Read MoreMy passion for crime fiction started very early, thanks to my aunt Andreina who was an avid reader of the genre. She had an extensive collection of “Gialli Mondadori”, a crime series published by the Milanese publisher Mondadori that sports a distinctive yellow book cover (hence the name “gialli” which, in Italian, means yellow). Since […]
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