If Guy Maddin were a scientist, he would be a mad scientist. Perhaps, then, he is a mad artist, effusively mixing images that appear to come from the silent era and sounds that seem to come from the first talkies. The metaphor is apt—and not just because of the weird, frenzied scientist father in “Brand upon the Brain!” (2006). It is apt becau…[Read more]

This analysis of the HBO television series ‘Carnivàle’ focuses on its overarching style as well as on its abrupt ending after two seasons.

This essay focuses on moments that stress the significance of inhabitation (of living in a space and finding a place in it) and duration (of experiencing time and valuing it) in classical American sitcoms. “Sitcom” is short for situation comedy and it is usually defined as a type of series in which an established set of characters are involved in…[Read more]

The encounter in the 1960s and 70s between Marxism and film studies, as an institutionally recognised academic field, was a radically incomplete and perhaps even a rather superficial and unsatisfactory affair. The work of cross-fertilisation between Marxism and film and their critical sifting of concepts and perspectives had hardly begun when for…[Read more]

This essay gives a historical/theoretical account of the interaction between psychoanalytic theory and American film culture. Through an analysis of the popularization and sensationalization of psychoanalytic theory and practice in the 1950s in America, the article argues that psychoanalytic theory in a neoliberal age is no longer seen as modern…[Read more]

Discussion of the historiography of the reception of Edward Yang’s film and the specificity of it in terms of documenting Cold War Taipei, a tightly surveilled city torn and its emergence as a modern city with a critique of Fredric Jameson’s reading of the film.

Syllabus for an undergraduate course on Erving Goffman.

A syllabus for an undergraduate animal studies course.

This essay offers a short story about long distance trade during the “global” middle ages. It emerges as a response to two seemingly unrelated puzzles: one, the role of walrus ivory in the Norse Atlantic economy; the other, the origins of a mysterious material known in Arabic sources as khutu. Although debated within distinct specializations, the…[Read more]

Franz Waxman composed over 150 film scores, the most famous of which is Billy Wilder’s film noir Sunset Boulevard (1950). The film plot bears a striking resemblance to Rod Serling’s teleplay for The Twilight Zone, “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (1959). Waxman, composer of the film, was approached to compose a score for a television episode…[Read more]

including readings of Joseph McElroy, Tolkien, Norman Rush, Sartre, and others

on vivisection at Ryerson University, and academic freedom

review of Andrew F. Smith, A Critique of the Moral Defense of Vegetarianism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

on systems intelligence, foundations of math, and else

on animals in literature, film

The promulgation of pollution control regulations governing factory farms has led to a striking new way of representing and intervening in the bodies of farmed animals: the body is being represented as a source of pollution, and various technological interventions, from genetic engineering to dietary changes, are being deployed to reduce pollution…[Read more]

This article examines Farm Sanctuary’s failed effort to save the Enviropigs. In the Spring of 2012, after losing the main source of funding for its Enviropig project, the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, killed the last sixteen members of this line of transgenic pigs, despite Farm Sanctuary’s offer to place them in permanent homes. The…[Read more]

An examination of taxonomic bias in the field of animal studies.

Roadkill is disgusting. Many people just want it removed from the roads as quickly as possible, and they don’t care where it goes. In Pennsylvania, most of the deer carcasses that are collected from the roads end up in landfills. But is this a respectful way to treat the dead? And what about the vultures and other scavengers who would otherwise e…[Read more]

English title: “Transmedia Storytelling in the narrative universe of ‘Game of Thrones'” — This essay’s aim is to briefly introduce the concept of Transmedia Storytelling and to provide a showcase analysis and review of the serial TV narrative of GAME OF THRONES in order to show how a television series’ narrative universe, driven by both producers…[Read more]