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In 1983, Frederic Jameson published an essay titled “Postmodernism and the Consumer Society.” Following extensive revision, the essay appeared a year later in the New Left Review under the title “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Capitalism....

On Photography - a collection of essays by Susan Sontag - explores what the title suggests: a take on the importance, history and nature of the medium of photography. Each essay - of which there are five - was originally circulated periodically in...

In 1964, Renaissance scholar and English Professor Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and created a revolution in the very foundation of critical theory that has since made it irrefutably one of the most...

Sigmund Freud published The Future of an Illusion in 1927 for the purpose of enlightening readers on with his analysis of the psychological operation of religious belief on society. The underlying, overarching thrust of this analysis is one of...

The Interpretation of Dreams was first published in 1900; by the time of a new edition was being prepared in thirty years later, Sigmund Freud was ready to declare in a newly composed foreword that within the covers of The Interpretation of Dreams...

Terrance Hayes is a contemporary African-American poet. Born in 1971 in Columbia, South Carolina, he was later educated at Coker College, where he received a Bachelor of Arts Degree. He continued his studies and received a Master of Fine Arts...

Anselm of Canterbury, known also as St. Anselm or Anselme de Buc, was an 11th century abbot whose writings have been traditionally heralded for their logical and philosophical basis. During a time when many theologians were writing from a more...

Virginia Woolf stands out as one of the most significant and iconic female voices in the history of English literature. A key exponent of Modernism along with writers such as E.M. Forster and James Joyce, Woolf was a champion of female...

In 1611, Aemilia Lanyer broke new ground female writers when she became the first woman to publish an English-language poetry collection under her own name. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum would prove to be the only volume of poetry that Lanyer would...

In addition to having a name at least as unusual as any offspring of late 20th century celebrities and playing a key role in the hysteria leading to the Salem Witch Trials, Cotton Mather still maintains his standing as one of the most prodigious...

The first type of writing that comes to mind you hear the name Ralph Waldo Emerson is probably not poetry. After all, Emerson’s towering stature in American letters is primarily derived from his essays. Therefore it should not be at all surprising...

American novelist Louisa May Alcott produced her 1866 novella Behind a Mask under the pseudonym of A.M. Barnard. Living in a discriminatory era, and writing for a partial society which favored Men authors over their female counterparts, adopting a...

The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's book written in 1961 by Norton Juster, an architect with a passion for planning, order, and, especially, maps. Basing the main character, Milo, on himself, Juster created an adventure story filled with...

Directed by relative newcomer Barry Jenkins, Moonlight is a film adapted from Terell Alvin McCraney’s play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. Production on the film, financed by A24, PASTEL, and Plan B, began in late 2015; the film was released...

Anton Chekhov devoted several of his stories to the lives of ordinary people; in some famous cases, he focused specifically on unknown, obscure, and miserable individuals. One such poignant work is "Vanka," the story of a lonely peasant boy who...

A New York-born comic artist, James Sturm's 'America: God, Gold and Golems' is a series of three graphic stories first published in 2007. Each story explores less well-known aspects of American history: 'The Revival' is set during the religious...

The Moor's Last Sigh is a historical fiction novel by Salman Rushdie. This novel is his fifth novel and was published in 1995. Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian author and a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature. In France, he got the...

Many do not know of Kurt Wimmer's 2002 cult classic film Equilbrium. It tells the story of a futuristic world in all conflict, especially war, has been eliminated through the use of an insidious drug known as Prozium that inhibits emotion of all...

The Tripitaka, also known as Pipitaka, is the earliest collection of Buddhist writings. Initially these writings were composed orally and passed down by traditional teaching and re-telling. By the Third Century B.C., they were written in the...

Harriet The Spy is a children's novel written and illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh. Published in 1964, it was an immediate hit and has been called a classic, appearing on three national lists of the best children's novels of all time.

The novel...

The Homecoming is one of Nobel laureate Harold Pinter’s most compelling and critically acclaimed plays. Disturbing, enigmatic, and darkly comic, it has been staged continually since its 1965 debut. Pinter’s own words in 1970 when accepting the...

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" is a vastly influential Modernist poem by Wallace Stevens. It was first printed in October 1917 in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, and then in Stevens' groundbreaking first book, Harmonium. The poem...

The Story of My Life is Helen Keller's autobiography, written during her time at Radcliffe College and published when she was 22 years old. It details her life from birth to age 21, beginning with an account of her family's home in Alabama and the...

Published in 1989, I for Isobel follows a thoughtful young woman named Isobel Callaghan as she deals with family conflict, personal independence, and the awakening of her literary ambitions. This short, incisive novel is the defining work of...