by Andy Stafford, Senior Lecturer in French Studies, University of Leeds; author of the forthcoming book Roland Barthes Writing the Political: History, Dialectics, Self. As we emerge now (hopefully!) from two years of the pandemic and regular lock-down, isolation and…
Category: Guest Post
William Blake as Natural Philosopher, 1788-1795
Drawn to Blake In Ross Glass’s 2020 psychological horror film, Saint Maud, the title character, a hospice nurse who has recently converted to an extremely ascetic form of Catholicism after a hedonistic earlier phase, is given a book of William…
The Lived Experiences of African International Students in the United Kingdom
The Lived Experiences of African International Students in the United Kingdom: Reactions to the Law through the Lens of Precarity and Consciousness By James Marson, Mohammed Dirisu and Katy Ferris The United Kingdom is largely a welcoming place for international…
Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine
Travel writing, as its name suggests, would seem to require travel in order to be effectively produced. After all, how can one write about your experience of visiting foreign lands if you’re unable to travel to them in the first…
Techniques & Aesthetics in 3D Films of 1950s and their Impact on Later Productions by David A. Cook
Although I have written about 3D films before in A History of Narrative Film (HNF, W. W. Norton, 1981; 1990; 1996; 2004; 2016) – both polarized and digital – in Chapters 12 and 21 respectively, I wanted to understand stereoscopy…
Classroom 15 by Julia Mueller and Zack Demars
Some of the most memorable educators are the ones willing to throw out the syllabus in pursuit of a higher lesson. When a fourth-grade teacher in Roseburg, Oregon, did just that during the height of the Cold War, he sent…
The Cruel Irony of Organ Transplantation’s Success By Edmund O. Lawler
Seventy-one years ago, Dr. Richard Lawler led a team of surgeons and nurses in performing the world’s first solid organ transplant by grafting a kidney from a just-deceased patient into the abdomen of a 44-year-old Chicago woman. She lived nearly…
‘One Night in Birdland’ A Post (humorous) Review by Ron Westray
Wahoo ‘Round Midnight This Time the Dream’s on Me Dizzy Atmosphere Night In Tunisia Move The Street Beat Out Of Nowhere Little Willie Leaps / 52nd Street Theme Ornithology I’ll Remember April / 52nd Street ThemeFats Navarro, trumpet; Charlie Parker,…
Is History This Time Really Coming To An End?
Much was heard lately about the emergence of a new Cold War between the United States and China. There is something both reassuring and disturbing about this confrontation: reassuring because we find in it something familiar and what we have…
Life in Reverse: Corollaries By Ron Westray
“It is possible that we exist in a predominantly narcissistic society – in which people want you to love them; and then they don’t want you anymore.” I occupy these worlds: jazz and academia. The jazz world is filled with…