Dancing with Philoctetes: Reflections on Pain and Remembrance

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Published: 12/15/2023

Abandoned by his community, doomed to a solitary existence with his voice as sole companion: can Sophocles’ Philoctetes still speak to us? What do his screams have to say? Dancing with Philoctetes: Reflections on Pain and Remembrance juxtaposes a new adaptation of Sophocles’ play with an essay describing the process of bringing it to life[…]

Evil Twins and the Ultimate Insight: Ayn Rand, Vladimir Nabokov, and the Polarized Politics of Reading

Published: 10/05/2023

With the 2020 election, political polarization in the U.S. entered a ludicrous end-stage. Partisanship, once a pseudo-rational system of biases, has devolved to a conflict between incompatible realities. In search of some pathway toward consensus, Evil Twins and the Ultimate Insight: Ayn Rand, Vladimir Nabokov, and the Polarized Politics of Reading looks to the works[…]

Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: Un/Making Worlds

Published: 08/24/2023

Superhero meaning making is a site of struggle. Superheroes (are thought to) trouble borders and normative ways of seeing and being in the world. Superhero narratives (are thought to) represent, and thereby inspire, alternative visions of the real world. The superhero genre is (thought to be) a repository for radical or progressive ideas. In the[…]

Lamma: A Journal of Libyan Studies 2

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Published: 06/20/2023

Lamma aims to provide a forum for critically understanding the complex ideas, values, social configurations, histories, and material realities in Libya. Recognizing, and insisting on, the urgent need for such a forum, we give attention to as wide a range of disciplines, sources, and approaches as possible, foregrounding especially those which have previously received less[…]

paq’batlh: The Klingon Epic (2nd edn.)

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Published: 07/21/2022

paq’batlh: The Klingon Epic is the definitive edition of the grand Klingon epic of Kahless the Unforgettable (qeylIS lIjlaHbogh pagh). The story of Kahless is a tale of legendary proportions comparable to those of ancient heroes Hercules, Ulysses, and Gilgamesh. Betrayed by his brother and witness to his father’s brutal slaying, Kahless is pitted against[…]

Resistant Form: Aristophanes and the Comedy of Crisis

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Published: 07/27/2023

Can attending to poetic form help us imagine a radical politics and bridge the gap between pressing contemporary political concerns and an ancient literature that often seems steeped in dynamics of oppression? The corpus of the fifth-century Athenian playwright Aristophanes includes some of the funniest yet most disturbing comedies of Western literature. His work’s anarchic[…]

Fascism, Vulnerability, and the Escape from Freedom: Readings to Repair Democracy

Published: 11/11/2022

A worldwide struggle between democracy and authoritarianism set against a backdrop of global surveillance capitalism is unmistakable. Examples range from Myanmar, China, and the Philippines to Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and the United States. Fascism, Vulnerability, and the Escape from Freedom offers a multidisciplinary analysis drawing on psychology and literature to provide readers with a deeper[…]