This essay examines the influence and effects of water in post-colonial African American women of the Gullah and Gee-Chee cultures from the sea islands of Georgia and south Carolina, reviewing the ecological theory of phenotypes establishing the eco-boundaries of the resulting pure-selves through the examination of one film and a novel: Julie…[Read more]

In this short piece I look at media creations of the contemporary political landscape by way of popular history as accessed through films. I suggest that one of the ways figures like Donald Trump or Narendra Modi access a certain violent masculinity is through a shared understanding of this repertoire of images.

This paper will be presented at the upcoming South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) conference Nov.3-6 in Jacksonville, FL. The research is a part of my thesis project that will be completed in spring 2017.

This infographic represents an in-progress attempt by the #Humetrics team at TriangleSCI to pin down values that, if encouraged and incentivized in the academy, would enrich and improve humanities scholarship. It is meant to start a conversation. What are we missing? See more about the process and thinking behind this approach at…[Read more]

This presentation is a slide-show introduction to MLA 8 documentation for classroom use. Reasons for citing, core elements of MLA8 format, and examples are included in the Powerpoint.

Most critics of contemporary literature have reached a consensus that what was once called “postmodernism” is over and that its signature modes—metafiction and irony—are on the wane. This is not the case, however, with videogames. In recent years, a number of self-reflexive games have appeared, exemplified by Davey Wreden’s The Stanley Parable (…[Read more]

This study is premised upon my experience of translating _Ekattorer Chithi_ (Bengali title) or _Letters of 1971_ (English version of the title), an anthology of letters written by the freedom fighters of the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, into English. Letters of 1971, a collection of letters, diverse as they are in meaning and…[Read more]

This paper argues that there is a need to look beyond what is merely “homeward” in the work of Thomas Wolfe. I take up Wai Chee Dimock’s expansive conception of American literature as “a crisscrossing set of pathways, open-ended and ever multiplying, weaving in and out of other geographies, other languages and cultures,” demonstrating how Thomas…[Read more]

In this brief paper, I first introduce Gwendolyn Brook’s “The Anniad,” a 43-stanza ballad at the center of her 1949 Pulitzer-prize winning collection, Annie Allen. Next, I make a case that “The Anniad” is informed by a medievalism combining Brooks’ girlhood reading and the physical environment of Bronzeville, her Chicago neighborhood. Finally, I…[Read more]

The June 1888 issue of the Phonographic World magazine presented John Pynchon, an ancestor of Thomas, as “The First American Shorthand Reporter”. While most biographical criticism to date of Thomas Pynchon has focused on the cameo appearance of a thinly veiled William Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow, we here set out further historical infor…[Read more]

An essay written for “Neuroscience and Fiction,” a special issue of SubStance guest-edited by Pierre Casso-Nogues