Humanities

The Great Recession and the subsequent structural changes in the United States economy have resulted in severe disadvantages for the unskilled worker in American society.   Latino immigrants make up a disproportionately large subset of the unskilled labor force for a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic reasons unique to their ethnic group.  Faced with clear social disadvantages, … [Read more...] about The Most Interesting Immigrant in the World

Kurt Vonnegut seemed to like the story of Cinderella. He alluded to it often. I submit that he went so far as to write his own version. He called it Slaughterhouse-Five. My claim may well be preposterous. Slaughterhouse-Five is not shiny or moralistic like fairy tales. It breaks most of the rules of narrative that fairy tales, particularly Cinderella, rigidly follow. Yet there … [Read more...] about Cinderella Goes to War

Although there are no lead actresses in Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, women and their manifestations play a vital role in the protagonist Andy Dufresne’s life and escape from Shawshank Prison.  Feminist theory identifies the ‘male gaze’ or scopophiliac desire - traditionally the desirous gaze of male characters directed at female ones – as a pervasive cinematic … [Read more...] about Male Gazes, Pin-Up Girls & One Man’s Escape

A primary facet of the American literacy consciousness is the ideal of American innocence and the tragic consequences if that innocence is lost. Yet many American authors remain deeply troubled by the role of sexuality within that conception of American identity, and more importantly, the role of those desires that have been deemed deviant. When Vladimir Nabokov first … [Read more...] about Incest and Innocence