Shakespeare’s three political tragedies―Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear―have numerously been presented or adapted on film. These three plays all involve the recurring trope of madness, which, as constructed by Shakespeare, provided a wider canvas on which to detail those materials that could not be otherwise expressed: sexual desire and exp…[Read more]

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]

Montesquieu’s ideas on China have been the subject of much study and controversy. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that, as discussed in twenty-two books of the Esprit des lois, China serves to illustrate Montesquieu’s fundamental principles and to elucidate his method. References to the empire appear frequently in the concluding chapters…[Read more]

A video essay about title sequences from films by Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher. An exploration of motion graphic design from analog to digital.

This primer in “cognitive cultural studies” explores the cultural fantasy of perfect access to mind through body. It shows that different genres and media—movies, novels, classic Chinese operas, medieval ribald tales, musicals, paintings, documentaries, stand-up comedy, and photography—have different strategies for making us think that we have ju…[Read more]

This is an examination of the recent work of Indonesian visual artist FX Harsono in relation to Chinese Indonesian identity, the erasure of history, and the challenge of communicating through trauma. It is my hope that this work will contribute to the dialogue on both the Chinese Indonesian experience and large-scale ethnic violence.

Argues that the documentary Paper Clips exemplifies the ways in which Holocaust education can unwittingly foster competing victimization narratives between blacks and Jews, sanitize both European and U.S. history, and serve subtle
but pernicious forms of supersessionism.