On many occasions cinema has chosen to shoot movies in locales other than the ones in which the events of the films are supposed to take place in. This could be due to various reasons, namely cheaper production costs, or inability to gain access to the original place. The choice of location, however, tries to provide a mirror image of the…[Read more]

Media representations of Arabs and terrorists.

n her treatise on abjection, Julia Kristeva argues that the abject is located outside the self, remaining in a state of repulsion that threatens to destroy the self. Abject representations are prevalent in the way terrorists have been portrayed in the Western news media post-September 11, 2001. These images of abjection are problematic, as they…[Read more]

Code switching is a practice exercised by multilingual speakers. Linguists define the term as the simultaneous use of more than one language. Code switching is prevalent in postcolonial countries in which the colonial language has continued to exist alongside the native language. In the past, code switching in the Arab world has been confined to…[Read more]

The changes that have been witnessed by media in the Arab world have redefined media’s initial role as a source of information. With the advent of satellite television new realities, namely the dismantling of communication boundaries, have emerged. At first, such advancements posed a challenge to government bodies, specifically in the Arab region;…[Read more]

This paper offers a brief consideration of the literary ballad as a register of what by the mid-’60s economists had diagnosed as “urban crisis” and in 1970 John Ashbery called “urban chaos.” I’m particularly interested in how poets used the ballad to see and see into the failures of the “spatio-temporal fix” of urban renewal. My general idea is…[Read more]

This paper offers a brief consideration of the literary ballad as a register of what by the mid-’60s economists had diagnosed as “urban crisis” and in 1970 John Ashbery called “urban chaos.” I’m particularly interested in how poets used the ballad to see and see into the failures of the “spatio-temporal fix” of urban renewal. My general idea is…[Read more]

This essay discusses an illustration of the opening scene of an indoor Renaissance performance, from an edition of Terrence dated 1580. This is the Prologue of the comedy “Heauton Timorumenos” (“The Self-Tormentor”) by Terence (195-159 B.C.) with an actor as the Prologue in a day-lit theatre. This setting marks the beginning of a shift away from…[Read more]

How do we offer feedback to essays? Over time, the response as narrative has become problematic. Class sizes have increased, more classes are being taught, fewer professors are teaching composition. Time has become even more scarce as duties outside the classroom multiply for full-time faculty. In addition, technology has changed the way by…[Read more]

I used to share with my classes that ebooks are outselling books, and like the music industry, the book market is now digital. While the record business has shifted in profound ways with the rise of digital technology, the book press is still in flux. Digital book sales over the past couple of years have been fluctuating around book sales. As a…[Read more]

“Expository Writing” is crafted to help students learn to write and think critically. In an effort to hone our critical minds and strengthen our writing, we will focus on the learned skills of summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing. In addition to several short essays, you will also be writing a mul…[Read more]