Cannibalism is almost instinctively horrifying. Indeed, the notion of eating ourselves remains one of our greatest taboos. Thinking of it, one is almost immediately dismayed, unsettled, repulsed. Even mentioning it may cause one to squirm. But cannibalism is above all a cultural metaphor for savagery or depravity, or a satiric tool suggesting the tendency of systems or cultures to destroy themselves. It is a method of satirizing civility or exposing its lack. But why does can

Image: "Underwater City" es.forwallpaper.com Donald Pease of Dartmouth College presented the Robert E. Knoll lecture on March 15, 2016. During his prefatory remarks, Department Chair Marco Abel reminded the crowd assembled for the well-attended event that the Knoll lecture is historically one of the premier events in the Department of English. Indeed, Dr. Pease’s remarkable presentation, “Between the Camp and the Commons: Bio-Political Alter-Geographies in Douglass and Melvil

​ At the risk of beginning by placing my credibility in peril, I’ll just say it. For a while now I’ve found the concept of the man cave both irritating and puzzling without ever having articulated why. It’s not, however, difficult to understand the what. Allow me to quote at length from The Man Cave Book, a how-to guide to creating a man cave of one’s own: The man cave is an opportunity—maybe our best and last opportunity—for freedom. Freedom from responsibility, freedom from

If you’re a friend of mine, or even a genial acquaintance, I’ve probably bored you at least once with my chatter about the pop- and folk-singing women of the ‘60s and ‘70s. This essay is an exercise in exploring the persistence of that chatter by focusing on one of those women—Dusty Springfield. More to the point, I’m interested in why Dusty captivates me in particular, and in general why these camp icons become such compelling figures. What is it about Dusty Springfield? She

Or, What Do You Do for Fun in the 24th Century? Last summer, I attempted, and aborted, a rewatch of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I love the show, so my abandonment mostly has the demands of grad school to thank, but since my viewing I’ve been mulling over some rather puzzling issues in it. I found myself with some possible answers after reading Siva Vaidhyanathan’s “The Rise of the Cryptopicon.” In the essay, Vaidhyanathan suggests the cryptopicon as an alternative to Fouc

My favorite scene in HBO’s Enlightened occurs toward the end of the first season, in an episode that centers on the protagonist’s mother, Helen (Diane Ladd). At the grocery store, inspecting a melon, she is surprised by Carol (Barbara Barrie), an old friend whom she hasn’t seen for many years. The two have a brief conversation, mainly about their children, before Helen asks Carol about her husband. We gather that, at some point, Carol’s husband pulled out of a business deal t

In The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt’s dazzling new novel (released earlier this year), Harry Burden has a problem with the art world. A somewhat obscure artist as well as the widow of a renowned art collector, she feels herself slighted by the competitive, sexist New York art scene—in large part due to her gender. “All intellectual and artistic endeavors, even jokes, ironies, and parodies, fare better in the mind of the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the gre