Mop Top Nico. Heartbeats (2010) I noticed something in film, and I have been noticing it for some time. I first started recognizing it when I was an adolescent, and I have been seeing it again in the new millennium. It has to do with hair, or more precisely how certain characters are coded with a certain kind of hair—namely, a mop top. Admittedly, “mop top” is not an entirely stable or universally recognized descriptor. What I am referring to is a style of hair that is longer

Photo Credit: learner.org At the end of my three years serving as a member of the Watershed Collective, I’m poised to shed the graduate chrysalis and move into the next phase of my academic career. So it’s no surprise that I’m drawn to theoretical and cultural representations of transition, upheaval, and change--fascinated by processes of becoming. With this orientation in mind, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect, not only on the phenomenal collection of posts shared by

At one point, Tim Dean’s Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking turned my stomach. I am not going to recount the exact moment around page 137 where this happened (you can check out the section on body-warmed-next-day felching on your own), but I will say it remains my all-time most exhilarating encounter with critical theory. After all the years I had spent studying critical theory and queer theory especially, I finally encountered something I could

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) ROBERT: So, we’ve made it to the final Mad Max post. We need to state from the outset that this post will contain SPOILERS about the fourth film in the series, Mad Max: Fury Road. For anyone that hasn’t seen it, we recommend that you do. It is truly a remarkable spectacle, even for those who don’t typically go for this sort of film. Either of us would probably be willing to loan out our copies. It is also perfectly fine to watch Fury Road even if you

Photo Credit: Bill Manning In preparation for the upcoming Humanities on the Edge Lecture by John Durham Peters, the A. Craig Professor in the Department of Communication and Professor of International Studies at the University of Iowa, this post will review a previous lecture entitled, “‘What is Knowledge For’ and What Does Communications Have to do With It?” The lecture was given at the 100th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association in Chicago in 2014. Fr

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

Whether you have revisions, resolutions, or revolutions in mind at the beginning of 2016, the Watershed collective offers some reading suggestions. Theory texts we read last year and recommend: Postcomposition by Sidney I. Dobrin (2011). This provocative text argues that the field of composition needs to undertake a fundamental shift away from its current interests in pedagogy, college writing, and administrative work, and instead move toward writing itself as the predominant

The Road Warrior (1981): The sinthomosexual and his catamite. In the first post in this series, we covered some of the discussions surrounding the role and purpose of feminism in Mad Max: Fury Road. One thing is clear, there is as of yet no consensus or even settled terms of debate regarding this topic. For this post, we will review the first three films in the Mad Max quadrilogy. We will explore topics and themes that appear and overlap in these films. We hope, through our c

Spoiler Alert: We are going to talk about the latest Mad Max movie. There’s really no way to do this without discussing some major plot points. We state from the outset that we like the Mad Max franchise. We believe there are some very high points in these films. We furthermore believe that at its worst, the films at least remain interesting and worthy of discussion. In brief summary, Fury Road deals with the battle-hardened Imperator Furiosa, played to shaved-headed perfecti

On April 2, 2015, Siva Vaidhyanathan, the twentieth Humanities on the Edge speaker, presented his lecture about “The Operating System of Our Lives” before an impressive crowd gathered at the auditorium of the Sheldon Museum. Vaidhyanathan, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, explained in detail (and without notes) some specific and logically constructed reasons why people should be worried about current technological trends. This review of