Closeted

The Crucible as an Allegory for the McCarthy Trials Wild accusations. Mass hysteria. Systemic abuse of power. Legal procedures of dubious repute. All hallmarks of the two major witch hunts in the American past, the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Trials. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a piece on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, is plainly stated to be an allegory for the days of McCarthyism, the witch hunts of communists in government and celebrity positions from 1950-1956. The world of…

Hearing Fidel Castro piece together a conversation with a reporter in English after visit to United Nations in the US on Youtube is quite a treat. He struggles to brave hostile questions with a limited English vocabulary and a thick Cuban accent. He is asked if he is a communist and tells the reporter to wait for the history, “the history will tell what we are.” (Fidel Castro after Visit to United Nations in the U.S., 1960) This memo will be an analysis of Castro’s contradictory interactions…

Angels in America is a play that seeks to expose and confront American society and the prejudice that plagues the country’s community. Tony Kushner aims to get the audience connected and thinking by strategically presenting every character in a relatable form. He explores the meaning of community from an overall political standpoint as well as an individualized personal point of view. In this paper I will draw attention to Kushner’s idea of American society existing as one community that…

Giovanni’s Room: Exposing Racism and Homophobia. James Baldwin was an African American author; he wrote literature in the form of novels, short stories, essays, and literary criticism. Baldwin was born in 1924, in New York City, and grew up in Harlem, during the Harlem Renaissance. Much of the literary influences from that decade were sparks of inspiration for the author. While growing up, the young author was aware of the importance of education; he knew it was a path to freedom, leaving behind…

Lost Girl places overt sexuality into public discourse to problematize casual sex as dangerous, deadly, and illicit. In addition, the desire to term Bo a “succubus”, which is as a subspecies of Fae, indicates the urgency society experiences to classify and analyze sexual behaviors, especially with the advent of medicine and psychiatry’s invested interest in sex acts. On page 43, Foucault writes, “Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality…It was consubstantial…

How Can We Fight The Underlying Motives And Pathologies Of Religious Homophobia? LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, & Questioning) Americans have come a long way throughout the late 20th century and today. It was only in 2003 that sexual activity between two mutual adults was officially legalized in the United States. The landmark Supreme Court case, Lawrence vs. Texas struck down “sodomy” laws in Texas and in other thirteen states. The outcome of this landmark case was the pinnacle…

For decades, the Philippines have been trying to fight the global crisis on HIV. But the last few years has been alarming as the number of HIV cases has been continuously growing. According to the Philippine Department of Health’s Epidemiology Bureau, in just one month in July, 2015, there were 682 new cases registered, 17% more than the same month the previous year. 94% of them were male and the average age was 27 (I. Gonzales, 2016). In 2008, only 1 person was getting infected daily, and then…

Journal 1: Destiny's Child has been regarded as one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. They have sold an estimated 70 million records worldwide over their 10 year career. The group was a launch pad for the success of Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. Destiny's Child's first album was released in 1998. The promotion for the album was done in order to make the girls look like "women" so that they would appeal to a wider range of audiences. In this journal, I will…

acknowledged for being an exceptional pianist, composer, arranger and possessing one of the greatest compositional voices in the 20th century. He was truly an under appreciated revolutionary force decades ahead of his time, even while being the first closeted then out black gay man in a particularly homophobic environment of an all black male jazz band, that displayed a heterosexual image. Clearly his harsh circumstances did not consume his passion, because through Staryhorn’s miraculous musical…

During the 1950s, change was at an all-time high in Britain with immigrants arriving from places such as Africa and the Caribbean, a newly formed youth culture changing the scenes and the popularity of jazz music and bars. Authors of 1950s literature, such as Colin Macinnes, Shelagh Delaney and Sam Selvon manage to encapsulate these changes in their work, whilst also portraying the different ideas of ‘Home’, or lack of, for their characters. With the authors having very different backgrounds,…