Author Archive | ainsley

While I came into this class a little late in the game, it ended up fitting well with my schedule this semester. In the throes of my other coursework–and being constantly told what I had to do and what I had to write about–it was a relief to be able to choose my own topic […]

What remains with you when you finish Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire? You are unsettled at best—disquieted, possibly wounded—and there is a decided lack of resolution; we are deliberately left grasping, wishing for the possibility of more. This play ends with no promise of good to come—its characters are not transformed, settled, or on their […]

Ainsley Davis 29 March 2016 ENGL 299 What remains with you when you finish Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire? You are unsettled at best—disquieted, possibly wounded—and there is a decided lack of resolution; we are deliberately left grasping, wishing for the possibility of more. This play ends with no promise of good to come—its characters […]

Sue-Im Lee’s article examines a “particular view of globalization,” and talks about how Yamashita’s characters embody the effects of globalization, and how their identities emerge among the “we” globalism has created. She talks about the dual role of universalism–as an oppressive force and as a progressive one–writing that Yamashita rejects the “undirectional, imperialist” versions of […]

The connection between Rafaela and ecocriticism and magical realism is continued into the chapter “Thursday.” This has perhaps been the chapter that combines these elements in the most pronounced way. “Had she never noticed? The elasticity of the land and of time” (149), Rafaela thinks as she leaves the cornfield with Sol in a panic–which […]

In the first chapters of Tropic of Orange, I first noticed a very pronounced emphasis on sense and feeling–which goes along with the idea of “magical realism,” as well.  By feeling I really mean an emphasis on “seeming”–what seems to be or what is perceived or felt by the individual is more important, perhaps, than […]

In both the chapters “Culture” and “Ideology” in The Theory Toolbox, much of the material and topics discussed reminded me of discourse one often hears in anthropology classes, or reads about in anthropological articles/books/etc. After you study the concept of culture for a while, the notion that culture doesn’t even truly exist (which sounds insane, […]

The “Working Question” on page 28-29 in the chapter “Reading” caught my attention. The section states that words like “queer” and “dyke,” which were used as harmful slurs in the 1950s (and for many years surrounding the decade), have since been “reappropriated by the homosexual community itself.” The author questions how these things happen over […]