Category: Cultural Studies

Guest post by Sheri Chinen Biesen I’m a bit of a nerd. I like digging around in Hollywood studio archives investigating classic cinema like you see on Turner Classic Movies with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I specialize in film noir, a series of 1940s–1950s American crime pictures noted for their moody, shadowy visual style…

Guest Post by Susan Squier and J. Ryan Marks Since its beginning, the journal Configurations has fostered “the multi-disciplinary study of the relations among literature and language, the arts, science, medicine, and technology.” Those are the words of editors Melissa Littlefield and Rajani Sudan when they assumed the editorship two years ago. The pair promised the journal…

Guest post by Joseph F. Spillane Historians have, finally, seized upon the phenomenon of mass incarceration as a subject worthy of serious consideration. The astonishing and unprecedented rise of imprisonment rates between the early 1970s and the 2000s is undoubtedly one of the most significant developments in modern social policy. Indeed, mass incarceration is now…

Guest post by Jerry Griswold “The Great Y.A. Debate of 2014” has become so pervasive that the New York Times Book Review provided a summary of the controversy in late June. In one corner is Ruth Graham and a few supporters. Grown tired of girlfriends keen on young-adult fiction (The Hunger Games, The Fault of…

Guest post by Jerry Griswold “The Great Y.A. Debate of 2014” has become so pervasive that the New York Times Book Review provided a summary of the controversy in late June. In one corner is Ruth Graham and a few supporters. Grown tired of girlfriends keen on young-adult fiction (The Hunger Games, The Fault of…

With the Modern Language Association's 2014 meeting now in full-swing, we're pleased to publish a second installment of Chapter & Verse today. This post draws from Daniel Tiffany's work discussing the idea and history of "kitsch" as it relates to poetry.  "Once upon a time, long before it had been reduced to a synonym for mediocrity in the arts,…

With the Modern Language Association's 2014 meeting now in full-swing, we're pleased to publish a second installment of Chapter & Verse today. This post draws from Daniel Tiffany's work discussing the idea and history of "kitsch" as it relates to poetry.  "Once upon a time, long before it had been reduced to a synonym for mediocrity in the arts,…

Attention humanities scholars and lovers of literature: We're pleased to open the "doors" to our virtual exhibit in support of the 2014 annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Simply click the banner below to enter and browse over 100 new, recent, and forthcoming books and our entire selection of academic journals. The books are…

Attention humanities scholars and lovers of literature: We're pleased to open the "doors" to our virtual exhibit in support of the 2014 annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Simply click the banner below to enter and browse over 100 new, recent, and forthcoming books and our entire selection of academic journals. The books are…

Guest Post by Teresa A. Meade and Leila J. Rupp Quite often, when we reflect on the field of women’s history and how it has developed over time, we use what the feminist scholar Clare Hemmings calls “progress narratives.” That is, we say that women’s history used to be all about white middle-class women, but…