Prior to taking this class, I was ambivalent at best towards it. It was just another hurdle to jump before I could get into more interesting courses. However, after completing this course, I have to say that it was incredibly useful, if nothing else. I have learned much more successful ways to craft essays, organize […]
Blog 8: Knowing How, not Knowing That
I’m not sure that I could recount well all that I’ve learned from Intro to English Studies. What bars me isn’t simply the fact that it’s always a challenge to succinctly put to words what’s gained by education. Also, it’s because I consider this class to be more skill than knowledge oriented; that’s to say, […]
Blog 8: Fluidity
I don’t even know where to begin sharing what I have learned in ENGL 299 this semester. I was a bit nervous to take this class because I didn’t know exactly what it entailed and I had also changed my major two days before the Add/Drop deadline— basically diving to the waters of an English […]
Repression and Desire in Suburban Paradise
During adolescent life stigmas imprint on our knowledge of what it means to be a man, and after years of conditioning male stereotypes, the American Male faces the white collar work force and encounters the pressures of supporting middle class consumerism and upholding the image of a strong provider […]
The Driver’s Knightless Armor: Interactions Between Genre, Style, and Heroism in Refn’s Driv
Nicolas Winding is known in the cine lit world as an auteur, that is to say, his directing career has been marked if by nothing else than by his style that can be described as being somewhere between noir, crime, action, and horror, all framed with off-beat and affected cinematography. In 2011 he released the film […]
To Each His Own Interpretation; Or, The Death of the Author and the Rise of Fannish Critique in Fan Fiction
We all remember the end of our favorite book. Regardless of whether the novel concluded satisfactorily, an unquenchable thirst for more still burned within us. But do characters’ adventures really end at the finale of a book? Although we will never see J.K. Rowling write a story in which Harry Potter attends another year at […]
Analyzing Horror throughout the ages
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart” and Stephen King’s movie “The Shining” illuminates the Horror genre by using Deranged character plots and complex character structures. Edgar Allan Poe was the first in achieving this configuration that later writers such as Stephen King were able to continue in their literary works. We specifically see this connection […]
In Defense of Blanche Dubois (Blog Post 7)
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 […]
Theory and Research: Blog 8
When first brainstorming for this project (all the way up to the rough draft, really), I couldn’t figure out what on Earth my research would center around. I knew that I would focus on pastoralism and Patrick Taylor’s An Irish Country Doctor. But, beyond that, I had no idea. At first, I wanted to focus on the reality of this […]
Blog 7: Camus’ Absurdism
Hopeless?: Existentialism and Absurdism in Albert Camus’ L’Étranger Albert Camus’ philosophical novel, L’Étranger, involves a careless individual by the name of Mersault who seems to stand idly by as events persistently occur around him. His attitude towards life is devoid of all meaning and ultimately leads to his execution, which he remains indifferent toward and […]