Minding Dory: Disney, ADHD, ODD, and the Making of a Distraction, a Meditation Tea’s video-clip-heavy presentation somehow didn’t keep us from leaving calmer, more centered, and dare I say enlightened? |
PoorTrait of a Lady: Jamesian Feminism and the Rise of Toxic Masculinity, a Finishing School Policy Manual If you’ve ever wondered about James’s women, been simultaneously amazed at their strengths and frustrated by their quick collapse into traditional roles, Maxxx has you covered. By presenting toxic masculinity as a poison that pervades even the most respectable of places, Maxxx helps us see why, try as we might, feminisms sometimes never quite hit home. |
Who’s Afraid of the Lighthouse? Deep Reference as FanFic, a Navigational Chart The Briscauxs tack through the choppy waters of 20th century drama and fiction with painterly prose and hydrographical precision, all while projecting a 21st century outlook. |
Manifest Deshtiny: Mukherjee, Migration, and the Assimilationist Politics of the Tech Sector “Go east, young techie,” said no one, ever, but if Berkeley is correct, we can see the outcomes of the blooming culture of Silicon Valley giving rise to the Asianization of the American Dream and the Americanization of Asian lifestyle expectations. We almost buy it, despite the Simpsonian stereotyping. |
ClimbThink: Orwell, Krakauer, and the Orthodoxies of Outdoor Writing, a Revenge Narrative Within any recounting of the adventure disaster, whether in high-performance mountaineering or the bear-meets-hiker variety, Tou contends that there’s more than a little retrograde retribution. Before you die on a cliff face somewhere, first consider how the survivors might claim that it’s all your fault. |
Helen of Troi: Star Trek TNG, Sexuality, and the Motivation of the Epic, a Holodeck Adventure It’s just like men, Rod and Berry note, to give epic proportions to their sexual conquests, and Star Trek projects those onto the very firmament. Check yourself, they maintain: she’s maybe just not that into you. |
Holodeck of Cards: Streaming Services, Binge-Watching, and the Narratological Ethos of VR Virtual reality headsets, while they have their adherents, have yet to capture the kind of eyeballs of simpler, more traditional programming via Netflix, et al. But just as the media “convergence” promised in the late ‘90s created billions of dollars in vaporware, progress, Grift says, follows in the wake of the charlatan. |
Spin Glass: Minimalism, Repetition, and the Geopolitics of PR, a Press Conference and Cardio Workout If it seems like White House spokespeople, pitch-persons, and PIOs all seem to be saying the same things, over and over again, there’s a reason for that, says Cage. We’re not sure we agree, but we know we needed the exercise. |
Dodge Ram Dass: the Literature of Mindfulness and the Rise of the Light Truck, a Mystic Correlation in Hauling Sure, correlation isn’t causation, but is it really a coincidence that the trend toward mindfulness has occurred at exactly the same time that SUVs and half-ton pickups have come to dominate the auto market? We won’t spoil it (read the proceedings for more), but suffice it to say they both have one thing in common: the proliferation of emptiness without any intention of it being filled. |