The classic adventure games—part of the earliest traditions of interactive narrative—have not disappeared, although they no longer occupy space on the shelves at the local computer store. Even as changing hardware and operating systems render these games of the 1980s and 1990s literally unplayable without emulating the computer systems of the pas…[Read more]

Title of short story: WHITING RICH AND STRANGE

A story of ethnic people in an oil refinery town in NW Indiana.
Comments are most welcome. This is part of a series of stories based in the industrial part of Chicago’s Indiana suburbs.

I am also placing the story in the Shakespeare group because–after all–it is a Romeo and Juliet story.…[Read more]

The members of the MLA Committee on the Literatures of People of Color in the United States and Canada noted at a recent meeting that they often make generalizations about humanities doctorate recipients and faculty members of color that would benefit from the light that systematic national data might shed on them. This report responds to the…[Read more]

Undergraduate syllabus for a course combining media studies with creative production practices in digital narratives and culture. Designed for delivery online, with an emphasis on individual projects.

Here’s a key paragraph:
“This chapter will be an exploration of the heritage function of Vikings in America. It will look at their presumptive whiteness, from the early nineteenth century, through the real mania for all things Viking in the mid to late nineteenth century, and on to present day fascinations with the Norse in popular music,…[Read more]

Here’s a key paragraph:
“This chapter will be an exploration of the heritage function of Vikings in America. It will look at their presumptive whiteness, from the early nineteenth century, through the real mania for all things Viking in the mid to late nineteenth century, and on to present day fascinations with the Norse in popular music,…[Read more]

For an MLA panel, January 2016, this talk recalls the 2014 crisis at the University of Virginia about an alleged fraternity gang rape, discusses the policy on sexual assault that designates “responsible employees,” and proposes measures: change drinking laws; avoid segregating any space by identity; offer responsible parties. Humanities professors…[Read more]

This course focuses on developing skills of close reading and literary analysis, both in class discussion and in assignments, through the study of major black writers. This section will be a study of global black literature—novels, drama, and poetry—written in English from the twentieth century to the present. We will consider how major aut…[Read more]

La Camelias de Amelia (written in Spanish) is a 2009 collection of short stories about Puerto Rico and its people. Its author, Zoé Jiménez Corretjer, forms part of the Puerto Rican writers called ‘La Generación de los 80’ (authors writing in Spanish from the island and not in English from US territory.)
This review only analyzes the work as a u…[Read more]

discussion of the may 2004 issue of pmla that treated science fiction as a scholarly genre. my question was, instead of writing strung-out, dystopian lit, why not ask what will be the level of consciousness of an individual human biped in a galactic economy of quadrilions and quintillions of people, each utilizing near- infinity numbers of…[Read more]

This article focuses on the limits of liberal discourses such as multiculturalism in an increasing global world. I focus on multicultural London and juxtapose Black British writer, Zadie Smith’s novel, White Teeth to Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things, to underline the multiple intersections between the status of colored immigrants, their des…[Read more]

This essay maps out a six-year literary transformation of Paris noir from 1957 to 1963 that overlaps with the Algerian war for independence from France (1954–1962). In this journey that transits from Parisian utopianism to postcolonial criticism, from Richard Wright and James Baldwin’s love songs to racially liberal Paris to William Gardner S…[Read more]