60 Second with Sage Goodwin
The U.S. Studies Online 60 Seconds interview feature offers a short and informal introduction to a postgraduate, academic or non-academic specialist working in the American and Canadian Studies field or a related American and Canadian Studies association.
Continue ReadingReview: Ghostly, Ghastly, Corporeal and Creaturely: Tim Burton’s Curious Bodies, First International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors
Tim Burton’s Curious Bodies (The First International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors), University of Wolverhampton, 15 February 2018 The inaugural International Conference on Twenty-First Century Film Directors, organised by The University of Wolverhampton in conjunction with Redeemer University College, Ontario, focused on the films of Tim Burton. Specifically, it explored the theme of ‘curious bodies’ in his work. Held at Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton, this one-day event brought together contributors from around the world in stimulating discussion that built on existing scholarship about Burton and challenged some existing notions. After a brief introduction to proceedings from Dr Frances Pheasant-Kelly (University of Wolverhampton), Dr Samantha Moore (University of Wolverhampton) delivered the day’s first keynote address. She discussed the function of physical metamorphosis in animation, situating it historically as a subversive tool that serves to disrupt narrative structure and causal logic. With reference to films including Corpse Bride (2005), […]
Continue ReadingFag Rag and Gay Radicalism in the 1970s
In the late 1960s and 1970s the radical gay press publications in the United States pushed the boundaries of acceptable journalism. Writing about controversial topics such as the age of consent, incest, bestiality and prostitution, the radical gay press not only horrified heterosexual society, but also alienated vast sections of the gay community.
Continue Reading60 Seconds with Olivia Wright
The U.S. Studies Online 60 Seconds interview feature offers a short and informal introduction to a postgraduate, academic or non-academic specialist working in the American and Canadian Studies field or a related American and Canadian Studies association.
Continue ReadingBook Review: The Saltwater Frontier by Andrew Lipman
Most historical accounts of the colonisation of New England focus on territorial claims made on certain swathes of land between the Hudson River and Cape Cod. Not so Andrew Lipman. Unequivocal in his rejection of ‘surf and turf’ histories, in The Saltwater Frontier Lipman argues that by focusing on the ocean itself as a paradigm of shifting territories, his book offers ‘a new way of thinking about Indian history and a new way of understanding this all-too-familiar region’.
Continue ReadingZora Neale Hurston: Life and Works
“Of all the millions transported from Africa to the Americas, only one man is left. The only man on earth who has in his heart the memory of his African home; the horrors of a slave raid; the barracoon; the Lenten tones of slavery; and who has 67 years of freedom in a foreign land behind him.”
Continue Reading“Exceptional Zombie Cannibals” – Antonia Bird’s ‘Ravenous’ (1999) and the discourse of American exceptionalism
In the last couple of decades, a conflict has emerged between the perception of exceptionalist rhetoric as a historical symbol of American patriotism and the much more harrowing visions pervading the present-day political stage. For a historian of the antebellum era, such as myself, “American exceptionalism” is synonymic with a post-War of Independence period when America rapidly transformed from a remote and largely unexplored land mass into a force to be reckoned with in the world arena (as noted by non-American observers at the time such as Alex De Tocqueville).
Continue Reading“Right to Try” (Again): A history of the experimental therapy movement
In recent weeks and months, momentum has increased on Capitol Hill to craft “right to try” laws that would profoundly change the medical landscape. The national legislation will allow terminally ill patients more access to experimental therapies (drugs, biologics, devices) that have completed Phase 1 testing. Powerful pharmaceutical and biotech concerns have been largely quiet. The Trump administration, for its part, has underlined the issue, not only in the State of the Union Address but in VP Mike Pence’s active support.
Continue Reading“Cracking Eggs” in Diana Abu-Jaber’s ‘Life Without a Recipe’ (2016)
This is the third and last post in the series ‘I am Fatima: Negotiating Identities in Contemporary American-Muslim Women’s Writing’ guest-written by Hasnul Djohar. This short series explores American-Muslim women’s writing in the 21st Century, focusing on the negotiation of identities within the works of a specific author in each of the three posts. You can read the introduction to the series here, the first post ‘Women’s Emancipation in Mohja Kahf’s Emails from Scheherazad (2003)‘ here, and the second post ‘Folktales in Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home (2008)’ here. Diana Abu-Jaber is a Jordanian-American professor at Portland State University and the author of two memoirs: The Language of Baklava (2005) and Life without a Recipe (2016), and four novels: The Arabian Jazz (1993), Crescent (2003), Origin (2007), and Birds of Paradise (2011), which won the 2012 Arab-American National Book Award. Abu-Jaber’s memoir Life without a Recipe explores how she establishes her […]
Continue ReadingFolktales in Randa Jarrar’s ‘A Map of Home’ (2008)
Randa Jarrar’s ‘A Map of Home’ (2008) narrates the coming-of-age story of a Muslim woman of Egyptian and Palestinian descent […] [and] can be compared to Kingston’s ‘The Woman Warrior’ (2000) which uses Chinese folktales; and Jarrar also alludes to Palestinian folktales. The protagonist, Nidali, describes this folktale through the way her grandma, Sitto, tells her the story, which is about “two sisters, one poor and one rich” […] “The poor one goes to the rich one’s house and the rich one’s stuffing cabbage leaves” (101). The poor one is creative and willing to help others until she becomes rich because her own fart is happy after she lets it go from her stomach and it presents her with gold, while her sister at the end is dying because her own fart gives her scorpions after forcing it to go out from her comfortable stomach.
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