Liminal being

Terms are not innocent, objective tools, but often carry within them assumptions of older scholarship. Since the answer to any question already lies, to a certain degree, within the question itself, the conclusions we give birth to become the offspring of the language we use. Terminology is pregnant with meaning often unnoticed in the analytical process, which it nevertheless controls from within. Rethinking the way we speak may therefore result in the discovery of new landscapes. A cursory…

fetishized it, and cast it in the role of “public” fetus” (2008, 48). In this instance visual imaging technologies in pregnancy are being used to make the fetus an icon, or a symbol of the fetus’ potential to become a child. By placing this image into the public it becomes an object with values as a part of society. “It is the “public fetus” as moral abstraction they are being made to view” (Petchesky 1987, 281). This widespread, singular idea of the fetus equaling a child would only be possible…

The infamous event of the Piltdown hoax is one that continues to draw speculative attention over a century after the initial announcement of the paleoanthropological findings. Although many scientists, especially those involved in the field of paleoanthropology, would like to forget the incident entirely, the Piltdown man—otherwise taxonomically referred to as Eoanthropus dawsoni—is perhaps the greatest hoax in anthropological history. Since the exposure of the Piltdown discovery as a forgery in…

In different religious cultures all around the world, there are particular events in children’s lives that mark their entrance into adulthood. In my Catholic faith experience, I underwent this coming-of-age process through my Confirmation, which took place in May of my junior year. After studying Catholicism in religion class for eleven years and growing personally in my faith, I was finally considered an adult member of the Church. Several of my friends experienced their coming-of-age years…

World renowned Canadian author Margaret Atwood is the writer of countless poems, essays, criticisms, short stories, and novels. The author of over a dozen novels, Atwood continually features female protagonists and covers themes pertaining to women. The Handmaid’s Tale deals with the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian theocracy that replaces the United States and returns to the suppression of women. Another one of Atwood’s novels, Alias Grace focuses on Grace Marks, a women…

In Jane Eyre, the first impression of Bertha emerges when Jane hears a “demoniac laugh – low, suppressed and deep” and some moaning from Bertha (Brontë 164). The moaning indicates that Bertha functions more like a wild animal than an ordinary human being. Brontë portrays her like a savage creature instead of a human. Jane also hears “a snarling and snatching sound, almost like a dog quarreling” from the attic where Rochester locks Bertha (Brontë 231). The sound Jane hears makes Bertha more like…

LANGUAGE AND ITS ROLE IN FANTASY LITERATURE The fantasy genre is distinctive due to its freedom of expression – the entirely independent framework of story and its style of writing. It has the ability to take people into an alternate universe via a portal or immerse them in a completely different world. These worlds are characterised as unique and separate from us due to the unfamiliar lands, mystical culture and history of the characters in the story which is brought to us by the use of a…

This essay combines critical reflection with dramaturgical analysis to uncover some of the ethical questions that arose when working in applied ethnographic theatre with veterans of the US Armed Forces. In the aftermath of 9/11, theatre in the United States has grappled with the ongoing armed conflicts through a number of recent projects and initiatives performed throughout the country, including Basetrack Live (2014), Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project (2013), and The Telling Project…

In literature, important things are often left unsaid. In this case, one must carefully read between the lines in order to extract the true breadth or meaning behind the work. This is exactly the case with Ernest Hemmingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”. Upon initial reading one might find themselves perplexed as to what is actually taking place within the text. The reader is introduced to the two main characters; a man vaguely named the “American man” and a girl called “Jig”, who seem to have…

Bharati Mukherjee explores many facets of feminine consciousness and immigrant experience in her fictions. She has dealt with the ambivalence of their psychic and spatial identity and the trauma of dislocations at multiple levels. The impact of patriarchy on the Indian society varies from the one in the West and therefore Mukherjee has tried to evolve her own stream of feminism grounded in the truth of compulsory displacement that they recurrently undergo. Indian expatriate writers do not write…