Posts by author
Michelle Vider
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In Defense of Precisely Inexact Language
Writing for Aeon, Elijah Millgram uses 1984 and George Orwell’s Newspeak/doublethink idea of language to examine why imperfect language, and expression that is sometimes inexact, contradictory, or misleading, can be better for developing the scope of human reasoning.
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Writing a Women’s History of Science
For Motherboard at VICE, Victoria Turk writes on the gender biases still present in writing histories of female scientists. Turk focuses on the legacies of Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, and even Florence Nightingale, whose roles as a statistician and social reformer…
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The Queer Holiday Blues
Lauren Gutterman writes for Notches, a journal on the history of sexuality, about the “holiday blues” documented in postwar queer literature. Gutterman’s examination of holiday-themed issues of queer literary publications finds that they’ve often focused on queer people’s exclusions from…
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Laboring for Masculinity
Allison J. Pugh writes for Aeon on the role of labor in defining American masculinity. After interviewing nearly a hundred subjects, Pugh looks at how work defines the self-worth of men, and how un/underemployed men try to redefine masculinity in…
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How to Rediscover the Arctic Circle
Ben Shattuck writes for Lit Hub on the history of mapping and discovering the Arctic Circle, a history that becomes increasingly valuable as the polar ice disappears.
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Building the Idea of Home
At JSTOR Daily, Livia Gershon offers a brief history of the concept of “home.” Gershon traces the changes not only in the emerging role of the home as a private retreat, but also the people who could define a household…
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Your Climate, Your Change
For Grist, Aura Bogado writes on recent developments in localized action against climate change. Bogado profiles the work of WE ACT (West Harlem Environmental Action) and its work in moving forward with a city-approved climate action plan to benefit these…
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Between Living and Dying
At the Public Domain Review, Sharon Ruston examines contemporary influences on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, specifically with regards to scientific developments in discovering the line between life and death.
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The Paradox of Growth As Good
Martin Kirk writes for Aeon on the paradoxical connection between economic growth and eliminating poverty. Kirk illustrates that increasing the size of the economic pie, by spending the world’s finite resources, with no change in distribution to impoverished populations, will…
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Integrating Your Experiments
For Electric Literature, novelist Noy Holland explores what it means to label (and often dismiss) writing as “experimental.” Holland notes the subjectivity and mess inherent in language and form, and why writing that aims for clarity might sacrifice authenticity in…
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What it Means to Remix
At Tor.com, Natalie Zutter looks at fandom’s remix culture through the lens of Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On novel, itself a remix of the Harry Potter series and countless Chosen One narratives.
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The Comic Tragedy of King Lear
Matthew Wills writes for JSTOR Daily on the romcom interpretation of King Lear. Wills brings to attention the fact that for almost two centuries, a version of Shakespeare’s Lear by poet Nahum Tate, one with little tragedy and a happy…