Category: gothic literature

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The Importance of Stories in Greg Anderson Elysée’s “Is’Nana The Were Spider”

Every semester, I include a few texts on my syllabus that I have never read, so I get to encounter the texts for the first time alongside my students. For my “Monsters, Race, and Comics” class, someone (I apologize but I forgot who) suggested that check out Greg Anderson Elysée’s Is’Nana The Were-Spider. I read a description of the series and added it to my syllabus. IsNana … Read More The Importance of Stories in Greg Anderson Elysée’s “Is’Nana The Were Spider”

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Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Frederick Douglass

We started my “Monsters, Race, and Comics” course this semester by reading various texts, including Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” and “Hop-Frog or The Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs.” These stories work as explorations of national and societal anxieties, explorations which rest at the core of the gothic and horror. Underneath the veneer of seemingly innocuous tales of a man imbibing in too much drink and killing … Read More Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Frederick Douglass

Conversation with P. Djèlí Clark

Over the last couple of posts, I have written about the monstrosity of racism in P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout and in David Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Greene’s Bitter Root. Since I am teaching this texts this semester, I reached out to Clark to see if he might be available to Zoom in with my class. Unfortunately, he would not be able to … Read More Conversation with P. Djèlí Clark

Art and Creation

In “Going Empty,” Dessa writes about filming the music video for her song “Sound the Bells.” She talks about learning to control her breathing to dive underwater amidst Jason deCaires Taylor’s submerged sculptures off the coast of Mexico. She ruminates about her career, writing about the fears that time is rapidly running out on commercial success. She thinks, Yet all my life I’ve been … Read More Art and Creation

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Southern Paradoxes in Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”

Every time I read Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), I’m reminded of the book’s problematic nature. Why do we continue to put so much stock in Lee’s novel, teaching it in high schools across the nation? Alice Randall points out the problems within Lee’s novel and states, “Let’s be clear: “To Kill a Mockingbird” is not a children’s book. It is an … Read More Southern Paradoxes in Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird”