March Through Time: Fortnite’s Passive Engagement with the Photographic Archive of Civil Rights
In August of this year, Epic Games collaborated with TIME Studios to host a special, virtual event dedicated to the 58th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Fortnite’s March Through Time, an interactive experience inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s 17-minute “I Have a Dream” speech, is accessible through the
Beyond Disciplinary Bounds: Engaging with Haunted Archives
“Archive,” as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, refers to “a place in which public records or other important historic documents are kept.” This definition not only locates them within a particular physical space, but also within the bounds of what is considered “important” and “historic”. This raises a few questions: who determines what is
Countercurrents: Book Review of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Christina Sharpe’s 2016 book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, published by Duke University Press, examines various representations of Black life including the literary, cinematic, visual, and everyday life experiences of Black people. She offers a cipher to navigate the unspeakable and unknowable realities of existing in the violent afterlives of transatlantic slavery. To
Cannibalizing Mothers: Pre-Oedipal Horror in Hannibal and Titus Andronicus
[Trigger Warning: brief discussions of sexual assault.] It’s been nearly ten years since Bryan Fuller’s TV show Hannibal (2013-2015) debuted. Since then, it has garnered a cult viewership and a devoted online fanbase, often referred to as “fannibals.” However, to their (and my) chagrin, the show was preemptively cancelled after Season 3. As a late-comer
Why Are They Smiling?: Representations of the Shoah
Okay. It’s pretty much impossible to write anything about representations of the Holocaust (from here on our referred to as the Shoah) without talking about Adorno, so I’m going to get that out of the way immediately. German theorist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno once wrote, “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”[1] It’s amazing
Critical Fabulation in Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s ‘The Age of Phillis’
Phillis Wheatley, abducted from Africa and brought to America as an enslaved person in 1761, is not only the first African American to publish a book, but is also the first to obtain international recognition as a writer. A genius child, within four years of her enslavement in Boston (at about age 11), she had
Ghost of Tsushima’s Interactive Haiku
The PlayStation game Ghost of Tsushima (2020) sold at a record-setting pace, globally netting six and a half million sales as of March 2021.[1] In the game, players take on the role of Jin Sakai, one of a few surviving samurai present on Tsushima island (located right between South Korea and southern Japan) during a
Is Rap Poetry? – Let’s ask Google.
The titular question of this blog post is one that I’d subconsciously filed away under “yes” quite some time ago, a question I’m now realizing I’d never considered with much rigor. The answer still remains a yes after further looking into the subject—albeit with some minor caveats. I will go over those caveats, but before
What if Coffee is Responsible for Fascism? Lol jk …Unless? Part II
In 1915, T.S. Eliot published his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Poetry. It presents the wandering thoughts of an alienated, likely depressed, and certainly indecisive modern man. In thinking of his indecisiveness and unsatisfactory life, he says, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Here, instead of representing productivity
What if Coffee is Responsible for Fascism? Lol Jk …Unless? Part I
Any old hipster will tell you that the best coffee—as per the directions of the barista at their favorite third wave coffee shop—is made with a Chemex Pour Over. You could, however, opt for the French press, (the modern design actually comes from Italy, an important note), if you prefer the thicker, oily consistency that