Written by Georgiana Andra Liciu for Prof. Wendy Thatcher Salt is a spectacular food commodity that had an impact on culture, religion, politics, and science in every country in the world since before recorded history. The study of salt is socially relevant because without this mineral life on Earth would not exist. Indeed, all life emerged from salt water some three billion years ago and all organisms need salt to function and survive. Salt was so important for humans that…
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Written by Linda Xin Zhi Zhang for Prof. Chad Lowe In Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, we follow a troubled young con artist sinking, not without consequences, into the decadence of the wealthy. Set in the 1950’s, the novel richly portrays many ideas arising from the psychologist Sigmund Freud, such as the unconscious, masculinity crises, and toxic masculinity. These elements are especially present in the relationship between Marge Sherwood and Tom Ripley, and help us understand why her presence…
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Written by Morgan Rowe for Prof. Jeff Gandell All the shiny metal phones seemed to magnetize me, drawing me to them. I wanted badly to replace my scratched up Motorola for the better and newer iPhone, until I saw the Apple advertisement hanging on the wall at the Telus store. The ad was simple – just a picture of a green forest with the following statement: “over 99 percent of the paper in our packaging is recycled or sustainable….
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Written by Rebecca Martel for Prof. Marie Thérèse Blanc On the surface, Jack Kerouac, member of the 1950s Beat Generation and author of the sexually sexist novel On The Road (the uncensored version of which was published in 2008), and Robert Mapplethorpe, the influential photographer of the 1970s and 1980s, who contributed to late Modernist and early Postmodernist art, don’t seem to share much in common. However, they both managed to expand the minds of their respective generations through their formal…
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Written by Julia Harris for Prof. Rita Much The governess of 19th-century England, as personified by Jane Eyre, was a feminist prototype at a time when women were still enslaved by their roles within a patriarchal society. The governess lived on the fringes of society, not fully belonging to her class, giving her a unique, yet awkward position from which to observe and question the roles of the women within it. Her position as an independent observer and thinker allowed…
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Written by Marco di Francesco for Prof. Charlotte Hussey Marie de France was a medieval poet of the 12th century, whose works were very well known in the Royal Court of King Henry II of England. Living in an era where the majority of the population was illiterate, Marie was of the very few women privileged enough to be educated by the scholars and clerics, who mainly prioritized teaching men. As a result, her works generally had feminist themes and…
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Written by Adrian Kahali for Prof. Shalon Noble If any single statement can be made about art, there can and will be another to refute it. Art, in all its subjectivity and diversity, is one of the most powerful tools made available to us (and by us); it can provoke thought, incite discussion, inspire war, take lives, and create love through those who wield it, and its possibilities are limited only by human potential. There is no telling why art…
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Written by Dahlia Piccirelli for Prof. Kris Woofter In the novel The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, the protagonist Eleanor Vance experiences quite a transformation. At the beginning of the story, she is a timid and submissive young woman who has never been loved or accepted by anyone, including her family. When she arrives at Hill House she tries to form bonds and relationships with her housemates; however, she finds it easier to connect with the dark and…
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Written by Chloe Gordon for Prof. Alyson Grant Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced shines a harsh light on the crisis of identity internalized by many Muslim Americans. Set in an upscale apartment in Manhattan, Disgraced captures the inner workings of wealthy liberals intent on professing progressiveness. In this environment of seemingly open-minded North Americans, Akhtar aspires for a “confrontation with the recalcitrant tribal tendencies we all harbour” (Akhtar 95). Akhtar’s protagonist, Amir Kapoor, born Amir Abdullah, is locked in an intense struggle…
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Written by Dimana Radoeva for Prof. Shalon Noble Writers who incorporate parts of their real life into their literary work publish their personal feelings and thoughts in texts that will inevitably end up in the hands of hundreds, maybe millions of strangers. In cases like Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, the intensely personal letter he wrote was meant for one specific person, Lord Alfred Douglas, and not for a mass audience. More specifically, Wilde’s writings about his relationship with another man,…
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Written by Sophia Magliocca for Prof. Andrea Strudensky “Does she love me, does she love me not please let me know” he said this game of chance most lovers play it was much pressure to sublime a single petal and much persistence to uphold such a pitied wish and yet he didn’t ponder, not a single second for what passionate soul had enough love left in their pocket to pretend to even care “Does she love me, does…
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Written by Gajanan Velupillai for Prof. Irene Ogrizek Alice Munro’s acute sense of human interactions and relations is often perceived as being driven by a feminist ideology. Through reading her short stories, the reader instinctively casts Munro as being a writer on the woman’s side. Although most of her stories are indeed centered on their emotional and spiritual growth and development, Munro’s concerns are not limited to female subordination; she is not demanding equity assuming only the woman is being…
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Written by Gajanan Vellupilai for Prof. Charlotte Hussey Gareth Knight’s Faery Loves and Faery Lais recounts a collection of Breton lais, some anonymous and some written by famed medieval writer Marie De France. In short, a lai is a short poem written anytime in the early 12th century. The term Breton in this genre of literature is quite nuanced. Breton in general refers to inhabitants of France without a particular focalization in time. However, the context of this term that…
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Written by Anaïs Charbonneau-Poitras for Prof. Pauline Morel The grotesque is defined as the degradation and distortion from conventions of normality which often entices a paradoxical attraction of the repulsive. The southern writers William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor both present the Grotesque genre in shocking manners in their respective short stories “A Rose for Emily” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. In contrasting and comparing the grotesque in both stories, the grotesque in Faulkner’s becomes perverse and in O’Connor’s…
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Written by Georgiana Andra Liciu for Prof. Isabelle Johnston Introduction: Capital punishment is one of the most—if not the most— controversial penal law practice in the U.S. today. The whole country is divided in its opinion about the death penalty; 31 states still use capital punishment, while in 13 states, this practice has been outlawed (“States”). This topic is socially relevant because an execution is an irreversible punishment. I am interested in this topic because I believe that justice is…
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Written by Sarah Levi for Prof. Kristopher Woofter Throughout The Shining, Stephen King foreshadows the destruction of the Torrance family by hinting that Jack will eventually fall victim to mental instability. Besides portraying his character as a dangerous man who struggles with alcoholism and a short temper, King makes Jack face challenging situations, inciting him to lose his cool and wreak havoc on his family. The Shining can be viewed as a story about a man’s inner demons taking control…
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Written by Anaïs Charbonneau-Poitras for Prof. Kristopher Woofter The title of Thomas Ligotti’s collection of short stories, Teatro Grottesco, can be translated from the Italian to mean ‘Grotesque Theater.’ The Italian definition relates to the Grotesque distortion of the American Gothic theme—that fate is predestined and controlled by some higher power. This theme is a pivotal influence in the short stories contained in the collection as the characters’ fates are predestined in their absence of free will and self-identity. Ligotti develops…
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