On Reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses As a Military Spouse If you’ve forgotten, or if you didn’t know in the first place, I was a classics major (B.A. and M.A. in Latin), and that explains why I’m always drawn to any article whose author expresses love for any aspect of this area of study. Here Jehanne Dubrow […]
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
Power and Punishment: Using the Language of Fantasy to Subvert Real-Life Oppression Power lies at the heart of all fantasy, written or imagined. To craft a novel of the genre is to visualize an expression of power and assign it to factions that will then weave and warp over the course of the story. Yet,
Science fiction may help foster a sense of global solidarity by evoking awe, study finds New research suggests that regularly engaging with science fiction—whether through films, books, or other media—can help people feel a stronger connection to humanity as a whole. The researchers found that science fiction’s ability to evoke awe, a powerful emotion triggered
The Real Cognitive Neuroscience Behind Severance I haven’t caught up with the second season of Severance yet, but I will because I’m interested in both the dichotomy of inside vs. outside stories and the use of science fiction elements to portray aspects of human existence. In this article two neuroscientists explore the question “Can a
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
A Twist of the Kaleidoscope: Three cases for literary criticism If, like me, you review books on your blog, you’re a literary critic. In this article Kasia Bartoszyńska discusses three books about literary criticism to answer the following questions: Has academia ruined literary criticism? Is this the end of literary studies? Has contemporary culture reduced
Culture wars: Trump’s takeover of arts is straight from the dictator playbook “US president’s attempt to control or dismantle cultural institutions plays into a long history of authoritarians using arts to push their agenda” Sorry not sorry: Prepare to be harangued for the next 4 years. We’ve moved way past politics now here in the
A Classic Chronicle of Korean America: On Kim Ronyoung’s Clay Walls “David S. Cho Explores Ideas of Homeland, Belonging and Identity in a Pioneering Contribution to Asian American Literature” Novels that introduce us to people from cultures other than our own contribute to human understanding in a global context. Clay Walls is a truly pioneering
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
What We Learn About Our World by Imagining Its End Arthur Krystal ponders the stories humans have devised about when and how the world will end: “Having to come to terms with this eventuality [the end of the world] is the price we pay for being able to imagine it in the first place.” Tash
Six Trick Novels That Play with Form One of my favorite kind of fiction is a book that plays with form. Here Gareth Rubin, writer of both fiction and nonfiction, discusses 6 novels that do just that. His list includes one of my all-time favorites, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) by Stuart Turton.
How AI is unlocking ancient texts — and could rewrite history “From deciphering burnt Roman scrolls to reading crumbling cuneiform tablets, neural networks could give researchers more data than they’ve had in centuries.” As ominous as the threat of generative AI replacing writers is, there are some kinds of things that AI can be legitimately
