This essay historically situates David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest as a transitional text between the first and second nuclear ages. Written in the immediate wake of the Cold War, Infinite Jest complexly develops the nuclear trope’s fabulously textual persistence despite the relative disappearance of the discourse of Mutually Assured Des…[Read more]

In this essay I address an area of cinematic musical development where the importance of women’s contributions has gone un(der) noticed: the compiled score, a film score created for early film primarily from pre-existing pieces, in both its written and recorded varieties. I examine written and recorded compiled scores created by Hazel Burnett, A…[Read more]

Criticism of the Shakespearean canon through adaptation as a genre has the capacity for liberation and social reparation. As a cluster of complex texts that sustains both past practices and contemporary interpretive conventions, Shakespeare provides fertile ground for training students to listen intently and compassionately to other individuals’ v…[Read more]

Stage and screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays raise ethical questions – that is, questions about how human beings should act and treat one another. In which contexts might cross-cultural enterprises be naturalising the values associated with Shakespeare to exploit unequal power relations among artists of different backgrounds? Con…[Read more]

McDonagh is arguably one of the most celebrated yet most controversial of contemporary Anglo-Irish playwrights. His plays have received mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, mostly for featuring graphic violence and obscene dialogues. Even though comedy is mostly seen as an inferior genre compared to tragedy, McDonagh, among many…[Read more]

The main objective of this article is to examine the representation of ʻhomelandʼ in three short stories by Caribbean-American writer Edwidge Danticat: “The Book of the Dead,” “Night Talkers,” and “The Gift.” All three stories represent Haitian migrants in the multi-cultural setting of the United States. A central theme that connects these stories…[Read more]

Alexa Alice Joubin was named the inaugural recipient of the bell hooks Legacy Award on April 7, 2023. The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association (PCA / ACA) established the award to commemorate the late feminist writer and activist bell hooks (1952-2021) who has authored more than 30 books. The award recognizes Joubin’s a…[Read more]

This special issue on contemporary performance proposes “trans” as method and as a social practice rather than as an immutable identity category that stands in opposition to more established ones such as cis-gender men or cisgender women. We ask new questions about Shakespearean performance: How might the meanings of the plays change if we…[Read more]

Gender is a set of interpersonal relationships and social practices that evolve in the presence of other people , in social spaces, and over time. My theory of trans lens corrects the institutionalized cis-sexism that assumes the cis status of even those characters with fluid gender practices. It does so by questioning the purported neutrality of…[Read more]

This interview with Dr. Mary Ann Saunders, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin, offers a new interpretation of Julie Taymor’s 2010 film The Tempest. Bringing her life experience to bear on cisgender biases in non-trans artists’ works, Saunders proposes a new interpretation of Ariel, as performed by Ben Whishaw, as a trans woman who is “both beautiful…[Read more]

This interview with Terri Power, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin, focuses on the representations of trans masculinity in Power’s play Drag King Richard III. For nearly two decades Power has been at the forefront of trans and queer representation in performances of Shakespeare. Weaving a personal story of the 1990s with Shakespeare’s early modern d…[Read more]

This interview with King Sammy Silver, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin and Terri Power, explores drag as a stage practice. A London-based actor and YouTube personality, he represents a new generation of trans artists. He has worked with Power on multiple Shakespeare productions at Bath Spa University in the UK and elsewhere, and has been…[Read more]

This interview with non-binary actor Jess Chanliau, conducted by Alexa Alice Joubin, explores genderplay onstage. A bilingual actor, Chanliau has played Viola, “an intrinsically trans character” in Twelfth Night and a queer Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. They spoke candidly on their experience of either being toke-nized or being cast frequently as…[Read more]

Cross-gender roles and performances permeate many of Shakespeare’s plays. This special issue on contemporary transgender performance of Shakespeare was published by the open-access journal dedicated to Shakespeare and appropriation, Borrowers and Lenders, and edited by Alexa Alice Joubin. It contains research articles and interviews of actors. S…[Read more]

This essay argues that an antiracist, anticolonialist Victorian studies must remain open to universalizing claims of the kind found in early works of queer theory, particularly Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990). Although recent work in queer studies (as well as literary studies generally) finds inspiration in Sedgwick’s…[Read more]

Tracing the collaboration between Dylan and Scorsese from the 1960s on to the Netflix original ‘The Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese’ (2019), this article argues that the mutual respect of the two artists rests on a shared contestation of borders between fact and fiction. In the spirit of romanticism, both Dylan and…[Read more]

Despite a lack of a traditional cinema culture, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has recently witnessed an increase in film production. This rise can be attributed to a number of factors, not least of which, is the opening of movie theaters, the establishment of international film festivals and the arrival of film companies. These ventures have…[Read more]

Despite a lack of a traditional cinema culture, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has recently witnessed an increase in film production. This rise can be attributed to a number of factors, not least of which, is the opening of movie theaters, the establishment of international film festivals and the arrival of film companies. These ventures have…[Read more]

This book explores how young Cuban filmmakers have expanded the range of sexual subjectivities on screen. It analyzes cine joven (films made by young directors) from the late 1980s to the early 2020s, film reviews, articles, and materials from the Cinematheque of Cuba’s archive to illustrate the confluence of sexuality, cinema, and discourses of…[Read more]