Billy J Stratton - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Billy J Stratton
The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion, University of New Mexico Press, 2016, 2016
Even as Stephen Graham Jones generates a dizzying range of brilliant fiction, his work remains st... more Even as Stephen Graham Jones generates a dizzying range of brilliant fiction, his work remains strikingly absent from scholarly conversations about Native and western American literature, owing in part to his unapologetic embrace of popular genres such as horror and science fiction. Steeped in dense narrative references, literary and historical allusions, and experimental postmodern stylings, his fiction informs a broad array of literary and popular conversations.
The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones is the first collection of scholarship on Jones's ever-expanding oeuvre. The diverse methodologies that inform these essays--from Native American critical theory to poststructuralism and gothic noirism--illuminate the unique complexity of Jones's narrative worlds while positioning his works within broader conversations in literary studies and popular culture. Jones challenges at every turn the notions of what constitutes Native American literature and what it means to be a Native American writer. Contributing editor Billy J. Stratton foregrounds these heavily contested questions and their ongoing relevance to readers and critics alike.
Buried in Shades of Night: Contested Voices, Indian Captivity, and the Legacy of King Philip's War (University of Arizona Press)
University of Arizona Press, 2013
Articles by Billy J Stratton
Hollywood Progressive, 2023
he passing of the celebrated novelist, Cormac McCarthy, on June 13, 2023, brought a close to one ... more he passing of the celebrated novelist, Cormac McCarthy, on June 13, 2023, brought a close to one of the most accomplished careers in American letters. As the author of thirteen novels, two screenplays and a dramatic work in five acts over a period spanning almost sixty years, which unflinchingly explore the depths of human evil, McCarthy had a significant impact on the development of post-war American literature. In works owing as much to his seeming indifference to the prevailing movements and fashions of the day, as they do to his innovations in style, "unblotted" punctuation, and narrative perspective, his work is suffuse with descriptions indicative of a preference for modernist aesthetics over the decentering postmodernist pyrotechnics that dominated the literary scene since the early 60s. These features were bolstered by an elevated prose style that often wielded a Biblical resonance in which McCarthy gave presence to the desolate worlds appearing in his earliest writings starting with The Orchard Keeper in 1965, which a critic writing in Kirkus lauded for its "unusual writing furrowed by a stark, visual imagery." Given the surreal and often gruesome themes McCarthy so often explored, however, he also had his detractors. Another critic writing in The New York Times on this same novel, for instance, dismissed McCarthy's writing as at once "handicapped" due to a "humble and excessive admiration for William Faulkner," while conceding that "he does write with torrential power." McCarthy was able to give modern emphasis to the kind of evil few could imagine as an McCarthy was able to give modern emphasis to the kind of evil few could imagine as an intimate part of American history and culture. intimate part of American history and culture.
Holywood Progressive, 2023
Bazterrica has extrapolated structures and practices of our contemporary Agustina Bazterrica has ... more Bazterrica has extrapolated structures and practices of our contemporary Agustina Bazterrica has extrapolated structures and practices of our contemporary world as the basis for a bleak dystopian vision. world as the basis for a bleak dystopian vision.
Transmotion, 2022
While I initially planned for this to be an interview, it was really a conversation and one that ... more While I initially planned for this to be an interview, it was really a conversation and one that occurred at a pretty cool Mexican joint in Denver near DU's campus before Stephen visited one of my classes to talk about Ledfeather. Be sure to check out El Tejado if you're ever in the area—they make a mean michelada!
The transcript included here follows the conversation as it took place—minus the food orders and background conversation, which any postmodern writer would usually revel in, as well as the divvying of sopapillas—while being faithful to the cadence of language. Only a few minor changes were made for clarity and context. Given the occasion for the meeting and visit, the focus touches on Ledfeather, and then moves on to a discussion of Jones's more recent works.
My primary interests were in the turn towards the genre of horror since Mongrels—a subject he is always eager to discuss, while also delving into other related matters such a weird fiction, the publishing industry, the function of literature, and as always, the future of humanity. You know, as Blink 182 calls it, "all the small things."
Transmotion, 2019
Among Native American writers and scholars, none have been more internationally engaged than Gera... more Among Native American writers and scholars, none have been more internationally engaged than Gerald Vizenor. From his his earliest works of haiku poetry, Two Wings the Butterfly (1962), Seventeen Chirps (1964), and Empty Swings (1967), to the publication of novels such as Griever: An American Monkey King in China (1990), The Heirs of Columbus (1991), Hiroshima Bugi (2010), and Blue Ravens (2016), Vizenor has sought give his characters a prominent transnational presence. In Blue Ravens, the first of a trilogy of novels addressing the experiences of Anishinaabe soldiers, including some of Vizenor’s actual relatives, he gives narrative substance to Jodi Bryd’s notion of the “transit” of colonial violence through what his narrator terms the European wars of the “empire demon more sinister than the ice monster” (109). In Vizenor’s body of work, this is not not just an intervention into a burgeoning area of critical concern, but perhaps, the culmination of a broader socio-historical criti...
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018
In this story, Jones explores the fraught and tangled landscape of memory in its various forms -d... more In this story, Jones explores the fraught and tangled landscape of memory in its various forms -dream and nightmare, presence and absence, specter and reality -through a narrative that merges dark fantasy and horror with a classic coming-of-age story. Jones's 16 previous novels, four story collections, and
Transmotion, 2017
Transcript of a roundtable conversation and written analysis reflecting on Glen Coulthard's book ... more Transcript of a roundtable conversation and written analysis reflecting on Glen Coulthard's book Red Skins, White Masks .
American Book Review, 38.1 (2016), 3.
co-author, Eleni Sikelianos, Denver Quarterly 49:1 (2014).
In recent years, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and Aboriginal scholars and writers have forg... more In recent years, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and Aboriginal scholars and writers have forged alliances to initiate and support decolonization efforts and the reassertion of native survivance. Native and non-Native scholars have responded to modern challenges by reconceptualizing notions of peoplehood, identity, and nationalism. Following these intellectual contours, rather than conceiving of native culture as totalizing, static, and/or incommensurable—as always already foreign—responsive readings informed by the critical work of Gerald Vizenor can support more sophisticated understandings of native literary production while revealing sites of native transmotion. Through a thusly informed examination of the work of the Tlingit poet, Nora Marks Dauenhauer, this essay highlights sites of transmotional fidelity between Tlingit aesthetics and classic Japanese Zen poetry. Through the development of a succinct, yet complex syncretic aesthetic vision, Dauenhauer is able to create new...
Weber: The Contemporary West, 29:2 (2013): 148-150.
Arizona Quarterly 67:3 (2011): 151-172
Evocations of Survivance: Native Storiers in Word and Image in Remembrance of Sand Creek
Arizona Quarterly, 2014
John Hillcoat’s cinematic adaptation (2009) of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) takes as i... more John Hillcoat’s cinematic adaptation (2009) of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) takes as its subject the horror of a post-apocalyptic world in which all semblance of order has been reduced to an ephemeral absent presence that haunts the nameless protagonist and his young son. Ironically, their only means of survival and source of solace is a desolate road strewn with the wreckage of civilization. Central to the Hillcoat’s film is the multivalent use of this road as a simultaneous symbol of refuge and desolation. This article addresses the various ways in which notions of ecological catastrophe and bio-politics help to inform conceptions of landscape and placelessness in order to create a cinematic vision of a not-so-distant future in which the world is, perhaps, just as we have made it to be.
Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal exa... more Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal example of the Indian captivity narrative. Kathyrn Derounian-Stoloda characterizes the Indian captivity narrative as "a discrete American literary form," [7] while Rafia Zafar claims that through the Indian captivity narrartive, "the British colonies had given birth to a 'simple indigenous American prose' form." [8] In Jill Lepore's award winning, The Name of War, the Rowlandson narrative is elevated to the rather dubious, if not meaningless, status of "America's first bestseller ," and cited as "a foundational work in American literature." [9] As these writers attest, accounts of captivity among the Indigenous peoples of North America have held a prominent place in American historiography, national literature, and popular culture, maintaining an enduring influence on the American psyche. True, indeed, but through the exigencies of canonization that these authors participate in Rowlandson's narrative is granted an elevated literary status that acts to dissimulate it from the deeply problematic historical and literary context from which it was produced. The detachment and distance produced in this literary process, intentionally or not, works to obscure Native American subjectivities and historical experiences through the privileging and consolidation of the colonial gaze and the tropes of pure war. Conventional reading practices such as these reinforce the all-too-common association of the frontier with dreadful images of animalistic, bloodthirsty savages descending upon isolated settlements, forming a line of discursive referentiality from the colonial period to the present that American writers have repeatedly returned to in times of national crisis. The adoption of a rhizomatic literary praxis challenges colonial simulations and repressive cultural, historical, and fictive constructs of captivity, which ultimately seeks to circumscribe the interpretive horizon and vitiate Native subjectivities in a system of disavowing characterization. [4] Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative was first printed by Samuel Green in Boston in 1682, and quickly reprinted twice in Cambridge, as well as in London during the same year. After this initial flurry of activity, Rowlandson's narrative was not reprinted until 1720. This date is suggestive because it follows the close of the Rhizomes: Issue 24: Billy J Stratton
Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal exa... more Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal example of the Indian captivity narrative. Kathyrn Derounian-Stoloda characterizes the Indian captivity narrative as "a discrete American literary form," [7] while Rafia Zafar claims that through the Indian captivity narrartive, "the British colonies had given birth to a 'simple indigenous American prose' form." [8] In Jill Lepore's award winning, The Name of War, the Rowlandson narrative is elevated to the rather dubious, if not meaningless, status of "America's first bestseller ," and cited as "a foundational work in American literature." [9] As these writers attest, accounts of captivity among the Indigenous peoples of North America have held a prominent place in American historiography, national literature, and popular culture, maintaining an enduring influence on the American psyche. True, indeed, but through the exigencies of canonization that these authors participate in Rowlandson's narrative is granted an elevated literary status that acts to dissimulate it from the deeply problematic historical and literary context from which it was produced. The detachment and distance produced in this literary process, intentionally or not, works to obscure Native American subjectivities and historical experiences through the privileging and consolidation of the colonial gaze and the tropes of pure war. Conventional reading practices such as these reinforce the all-too-common association of the frontier with dreadful images of animalistic, bloodthirsty savages descending upon isolated settlements, forming a line of discursive referentiality from the colonial period to the present that American writers have repeatedly returned to in times of national crisis. The adoption of a rhizomatic literary praxis challenges colonial simulations and repressive cultural, historical, and fictive constructs of captivity, which ultimately seeks to circumscribe the interpretive horizon and vitiate Native subjectivities in a system of disavowing characterization. [4] Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative was first printed by Samuel Green in Boston in 1682, and quickly reprinted twice in Cambridge, as well as in London during the same year. After this initial flurry of activity, Rowlandson's narrative was not reprinted until 1720. This date is suggestive because it follows the close of the Rhizomes: Issue 24: Billy J Stratton
Wíčazo Ša Review 28:1 (2008): 51-72
Chapters by Billy J Stratton
Jones, Stephen Graham
The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020, 2022
Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, 2019
The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion, University of New Mexico Press, 2016, 2016
Even as Stephen Graham Jones generates a dizzying range of brilliant fiction, his work remains st... more Even as Stephen Graham Jones generates a dizzying range of brilliant fiction, his work remains strikingly absent from scholarly conversations about Native and western American literature, owing in part to his unapologetic embrace of popular genres such as horror and science fiction. Steeped in dense narrative references, literary and historical allusions, and experimental postmodern stylings, his fiction informs a broad array of literary and popular conversations.
The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones is the first collection of scholarship on Jones's ever-expanding oeuvre. The diverse methodologies that inform these essays--from Native American critical theory to poststructuralism and gothic noirism--illuminate the unique complexity of Jones's narrative worlds while positioning his works within broader conversations in literary studies and popular culture. Jones challenges at every turn the notions of what constitutes Native American literature and what it means to be a Native American writer. Contributing editor Billy J. Stratton foregrounds these heavily contested questions and their ongoing relevance to readers and critics alike.
Buried in Shades of Night: Contested Voices, Indian Captivity, and the Legacy of King Philip's War (University of Arizona Press)
University of Arizona Press, 2013
Hollywood Progressive, 2023
he passing of the celebrated novelist, Cormac McCarthy, on June 13, 2023, brought a close to one ... more he passing of the celebrated novelist, Cormac McCarthy, on June 13, 2023, brought a close to one of the most accomplished careers in American letters. As the author of thirteen novels, two screenplays and a dramatic work in five acts over a period spanning almost sixty years, which unflinchingly explore the depths of human evil, McCarthy had a significant impact on the development of post-war American literature. In works owing as much to his seeming indifference to the prevailing movements and fashions of the day, as they do to his innovations in style, "unblotted" punctuation, and narrative perspective, his work is suffuse with descriptions indicative of a preference for modernist aesthetics over the decentering postmodernist pyrotechnics that dominated the literary scene since the early 60s. These features were bolstered by an elevated prose style that often wielded a Biblical resonance in which McCarthy gave presence to the desolate worlds appearing in his earliest writings starting with The Orchard Keeper in 1965, which a critic writing in Kirkus lauded for its "unusual writing furrowed by a stark, visual imagery." Given the surreal and often gruesome themes McCarthy so often explored, however, he also had his detractors. Another critic writing in The New York Times on this same novel, for instance, dismissed McCarthy's writing as at once "handicapped" due to a "humble and excessive admiration for William Faulkner," while conceding that "he does write with torrential power." McCarthy was able to give modern emphasis to the kind of evil few could imagine as an McCarthy was able to give modern emphasis to the kind of evil few could imagine as an intimate part of American history and culture. intimate part of American history and culture.
Holywood Progressive, 2023
Bazterrica has extrapolated structures and practices of our contemporary Agustina Bazterrica has ... more Bazterrica has extrapolated structures and practices of our contemporary Agustina Bazterrica has extrapolated structures and practices of our contemporary world as the basis for a bleak dystopian vision. world as the basis for a bleak dystopian vision.
Transmotion, 2022
While I initially planned for this to be an interview, it was really a conversation and one that ... more While I initially planned for this to be an interview, it was really a conversation and one that occurred at a pretty cool Mexican joint in Denver near DU's campus before Stephen visited one of my classes to talk about Ledfeather. Be sure to check out El Tejado if you're ever in the area—they make a mean michelada!
The transcript included here follows the conversation as it took place—minus the food orders and background conversation, which any postmodern writer would usually revel in, as well as the divvying of sopapillas—while being faithful to the cadence of language. Only a few minor changes were made for clarity and context. Given the occasion for the meeting and visit, the focus touches on Ledfeather, and then moves on to a discussion of Jones's more recent works.
My primary interests were in the turn towards the genre of horror since Mongrels—a subject he is always eager to discuss, while also delving into other related matters such a weird fiction, the publishing industry, the function of literature, and as always, the future of humanity. You know, as Blink 182 calls it, "all the small things."
Transmotion, 2019
Among Native American writers and scholars, none have been more internationally engaged than Gera... more Among Native American writers and scholars, none have been more internationally engaged than Gerald Vizenor. From his his earliest works of haiku poetry, Two Wings the Butterfly (1962), Seventeen Chirps (1964), and Empty Swings (1967), to the publication of novels such as Griever: An American Monkey King in China (1990), The Heirs of Columbus (1991), Hiroshima Bugi (2010), and Blue Ravens (2016), Vizenor has sought give his characters a prominent transnational presence. In Blue Ravens, the first of a trilogy of novels addressing the experiences of Anishinaabe soldiers, including some of Vizenor’s actual relatives, he gives narrative substance to Jodi Bryd’s notion of the “transit” of colonial violence through what his narrator terms the European wars of the “empire demon more sinister than the ice monster” (109). In Vizenor’s body of work, this is not not just an intervention into a burgeoning area of critical concern, but perhaps, the culmination of a broader socio-historical criti...
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018
In this story, Jones explores the fraught and tangled landscape of memory in its various forms -d... more In this story, Jones explores the fraught and tangled landscape of memory in its various forms -dream and nightmare, presence and absence, specter and reality -through a narrative that merges dark fantasy and horror with a classic coming-of-age story. Jones's 16 previous novels, four story collections, and
Transmotion, 2017
Transcript of a roundtable conversation and written analysis reflecting on Glen Coulthard's book ... more Transcript of a roundtable conversation and written analysis reflecting on Glen Coulthard's book Red Skins, White Masks .
American Book Review, 38.1 (2016), 3.
co-author, Eleni Sikelianos, Denver Quarterly 49:1 (2014).
In recent years, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and Aboriginal scholars and writers have forg... more In recent years, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and Aboriginal scholars and writers have forged alliances to initiate and support decolonization efforts and the reassertion of native survivance. Native and non-Native scholars have responded to modern challenges by reconceptualizing notions of peoplehood, identity, and nationalism. Following these intellectual contours, rather than conceiving of native culture as totalizing, static, and/or incommensurable—as always already foreign—responsive readings informed by the critical work of Gerald Vizenor can support more sophisticated understandings of native literary production while revealing sites of native transmotion. Through a thusly informed examination of the work of the Tlingit poet, Nora Marks Dauenhauer, this essay highlights sites of transmotional fidelity between Tlingit aesthetics and classic Japanese Zen poetry. Through the development of a succinct, yet complex syncretic aesthetic vision, Dauenhauer is able to create new...
Weber: The Contemporary West, 29:2 (2013): 148-150.
Arizona Quarterly 67:3 (2011): 151-172
Evocations of Survivance: Native Storiers in Word and Image in Remembrance of Sand Creek
Arizona Quarterly, 2014
John Hillcoat’s cinematic adaptation (2009) of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) takes as i... more John Hillcoat’s cinematic adaptation (2009) of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) takes as its subject the horror of a post-apocalyptic world in which all semblance of order has been reduced to an ephemeral absent presence that haunts the nameless protagonist and his young son. Ironically, their only means of survival and source of solace is a desolate road strewn with the wreckage of civilization. Central to the Hillcoat’s film is the multivalent use of this road as a simultaneous symbol of refuge and desolation. This article addresses the various ways in which notions of ecological catastrophe and bio-politics help to inform conceptions of landscape and placelessness in order to create a cinematic vision of a not-so-distant future in which the world is, perhaps, just as we have made it to be.
Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal exa... more Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal example of the Indian captivity narrative. Kathyrn Derounian-Stoloda characterizes the Indian captivity narrative as "a discrete American literary form," [7] while Rafia Zafar claims that through the Indian captivity narrartive, "the British colonies had given birth to a 'simple indigenous American prose' form." [8] In Jill Lepore's award winning, The Name of War, the Rowlandson narrative is elevated to the rather dubious, if not meaningless, status of "America's first bestseller ," and cited as "a foundational work in American literature." [9] As these writers attest, accounts of captivity among the Indigenous peoples of North America have held a prominent place in American historiography, national literature, and popular culture, maintaining an enduring influence on the American psyche. True, indeed, but through the exigencies of canonization that these authors participate in Rowlandson's narrative is granted an elevated literary status that acts to dissimulate it from the deeply problematic historical and literary context from which it was produced. The detachment and distance produced in this literary process, intentionally or not, works to obscure Native American subjectivities and historical experiences through the privileging and consolidation of the colonial gaze and the tropes of pure war. Conventional reading practices such as these reinforce the all-too-common association of the frontier with dreadful images of animalistic, bloodthirsty savages descending upon isolated settlements, forming a line of discursive referentiality from the colonial period to the present that American writers have repeatedly returned to in times of national crisis. The adoption of a rhizomatic literary praxis challenges colonial simulations and repressive cultural, historical, and fictive constructs of captivity, which ultimately seeks to circumscribe the interpretive horizon and vitiate Native subjectivities in a system of disavowing characterization. [4] Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative was first printed by Samuel Green in Boston in 1682, and quickly reprinted twice in Cambridge, as well as in London during the same year. After this initial flurry of activity, Rowlandson's narrative was not reprinted until 1720. This date is suggestive because it follows the close of the Rhizomes: Issue 24: Billy J Stratton
Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal exa... more Goodness of God..., [6] has been viewed by critics and historians as the model and archetypal example of the Indian captivity narrative. Kathyrn Derounian-Stoloda characterizes the Indian captivity narrative as "a discrete American literary form," [7] while Rafia Zafar claims that through the Indian captivity narrartive, "the British colonies had given birth to a 'simple indigenous American prose' form." [8] In Jill Lepore's award winning, The Name of War, the Rowlandson narrative is elevated to the rather dubious, if not meaningless, status of "America's first bestseller ," and cited as "a foundational work in American literature." [9] As these writers attest, accounts of captivity among the Indigenous peoples of North America have held a prominent place in American historiography, national literature, and popular culture, maintaining an enduring influence on the American psyche. True, indeed, but through the exigencies of canonization that these authors participate in Rowlandson's narrative is granted an elevated literary status that acts to dissimulate it from the deeply problematic historical and literary context from which it was produced. The detachment and distance produced in this literary process, intentionally or not, works to obscure Native American subjectivities and historical experiences through the privileging and consolidation of the colonial gaze and the tropes of pure war. Conventional reading practices such as these reinforce the all-too-common association of the frontier with dreadful images of animalistic, bloodthirsty savages descending upon isolated settlements, forming a line of discursive referentiality from the colonial period to the present that American writers have repeatedly returned to in times of national crisis. The adoption of a rhizomatic literary praxis challenges colonial simulations and repressive cultural, historical, and fictive constructs of captivity, which ultimately seeks to circumscribe the interpretive horizon and vitiate Native subjectivities in a system of disavowing characterization. [4] Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative was first printed by Samuel Green in Boston in 1682, and quickly reprinted twice in Cambridge, as well as in London during the same year. After this initial flurry of activity, Rowlandson's narrative was not reprinted until 1720. This date is suggestive because it follows the close of the Rhizomes: Issue 24: Billy J Stratton
Wíčazo Ša Review 28:1 (2008): 51-72
Jones, Stephen Graham
The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020, 2022
Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, 2019
The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion. Ed. Billy J. Stratton. University of ... more The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion. Ed. Billy J. Stratton. University of New Mexico Press, 2016. 82-110.
from, Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies: Native North America in (Trans)Mot... more from, Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies: Native North America in (Trans)Motion, [Chapter 4] Edited by Birgit Däwes, Karsten Fitz, Sabine N. Meyer
In Mediating Indianness, Ed. Cathy Covell Waegner, Michigan State UP, 2014.
In Native Games: Indigenous Peoples and Sports in the Post-Colonial World, Eds. Chris Hallinan an... more In Native Games: Indigenous Peoples and Sports in the Post-Colonial World, Eds. Chris Hallinan and Barry Judd, Emerald, 2013
Hollywood Progressive, 2023
Erich Maria Remarque's crushing war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front finally got its adaptat... more Erich Maria Remarque's crushing war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front finally got its adaptation to German cinema. Released by Netflix on October 28, 2022 and directed by Edward Berger (yeah, just in time for Halloween with more blood and gore than Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger ever spilled), it garnered nine Academy Award nominations, winning four. Berger's loose adaptation is driven by a compelling performance by Felix Kammerer in the role of the film's protagonist, Paul Bäumer. The pervasive sense of dread and hopelessness of the film is heightened by a strong supporting cast in the roles of Bäumer's fellow soldiers, including Albrecht Schuch's standout portrayal of the "shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten" veteran, Katczinsky, along with an ensemble cast in the roles of military leaders and government officials. The woeful march towards inevitable doom depicted in the film's source text is further bolstered by painfully lucid images of a natural world ravaged by trench warfare in which national borders have given way to the hellish no man's lands that came to symbolize World War I. This forlorn setting is brilliantly rendered through the cinematography of James Friend and supplemented by the hauntingly minimalist music by Volker Bertelmann, both winning Oscars in recognition for their outstanding work.
Holywood Progressive, 2023
Given the direction of contemporary society...the alarm sounded in Soylent Green has Given the di... more Given the direction of contemporary society...the alarm sounded in Soylent Green has Given the direction of contemporary society...the alarm sounded in Soylent Green has only become louder and more urgent. only become louder and more urgent.
Hollywood Progressive, 2023
HOME FILM D r. David Bowman's request to the HAL 9000 computer system, "Open the pod bay doors, H... more HOME FILM D r. David Bowman's request to the HAL 9000 computer system, "Open the pod bay doors, HAL," to which HAL responds, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey forms one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history. This conversation between human and machine exposes the dreadful recognition that the computer system used to control the spacecraft, Discovery One, on its voyage to Jupiter, has gone rogue and is intent on eliminating the crew to ensure the completion of the mission. The emergence of the large language model, artificial intelligence-powered chatbot and search engine, ChatGPT, is evocative of comparisons with Kubrick's famous scene. For many, such ideas and connections are deeply unsettling, and rightly so. Since its release in November 2022, there has been an outpouring of commentary and prognostications expressing a range of divergent views about its possible impacts on human society. These have spanned from the optimistic, for its transformational significance, to the bleakly dystopian and apocalyptic as we grapple with the implications of AI technology and its possible impacts on our futures. ChatGPT has been frequently described as the "tipping point for AI," while being hailed for its ability to "write original poetry, essays, computer code and much more, all as if it were human." In a more egoistic context, a commentator writing in Wired, described as "thumbs bloody with disappointment" from their struggles on dating apps like Tinder, hailed ChatGPT as a godsend. From their perspective, the writing
Hollywood Progressive, 2023
Hollywood Progressive, 2023
erriam-Webster recently announced "gas-lighting" as their word of the year. Soon after and not to... more erriam-Webster recently announced "gas-lighting" as their word of the year. Soon after and not to be outdone, the Oxford English Dictionary-reminding everyone of their status as the "definitive record of the English language," Scrabble's™ officially sanctioned dictionaries be damnedchose the hipper phrase, "goblin mode." As if anticipating the chaos to come, the Collins English Dictionary, the Rodney Dangerfield of the lexical world, was first to announce their word of the year giving the distinction to "permacrisis." If only they'd all waited . . . such a permacrisis of contending words may have been averted with the choice for the honor of a term that became a thorn in the body double's side of the Hollywood elite: "nepo baby." While this syntactic combination is relatively new, the concept behind it is nearly as old as civilization itself, bestowing a scheme of privilege and entitlement that functions to amplify and concentrate power and wealth. It doesn't take much thinking to recall a slew of examples of this phenomenon in American history and popular culture. After all, nepotism simply names various practices that have infiltrated nearly every nook and cranny of American society where there's money to be made and influence to be wielded. Although there will always be some notable exceptions to the rule of success by nepotism, the subjects of such stories are often offered up as convenient exemplars of meritocracy that feed the mythos of the American
David Lynch exposed the rot at the heart of American culture
The Conversation, 2025
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
J ohn Carpenter's adaptation of The Thing based on the novella by John W. Campbell (a deeply prob... more J ohn Carpenter's adaptation of The Thing based on the novella by John W. Campbell (a deeply problematic writer due to his racism and attraction to pseudoscience) titled Who Goes There? (1938) and premiered on June 25th, 1982-in an event hosted by the queen of scream, Elvira and on the same day as Blade Runner. The film broke new ground in the realm of sci-fi-horror while creating distance from its connection to the original source. Equipped with the magic of the movie make-up and special effects of Rob Bottin, Carpenter's adaptation brought a sense of realism, gore, and hideous alien monstrosity that stood in stark relief from the Campbell's novella, as well as Christian Nyby's previous 1951 adaptation, The Thing from Another World, both of which featured a three-eyed, humanoid alien. It was also a harsh departure from the endearing alien of Steven Spielberg's E.T., released just a few weeks prior. Although Carpenter's contrasting approach from these examples gave The Thing a much-increased sense of tension and grotesqueness, such features were initially seen as more of a detriment to the final cut as they were any indication of his directorial and creative talents. This was due in large part to the visceral effect his "disgusting" and "repellant" alien transformation scenes had on some critics and viewers, even prompting Roger Ebert to call it "the most nauseating thing I've ever seen on a movie screen." John Carpenter's "The Thing" John Carpenter's "The Thing" On Not Just Knowing One is Human, but in Being and Acting for the World Beyond On Not Just Knowing One is Human, but in Being and Acting for the World Beyond Our Own Our Own
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
J ohn Carpenter's adaptation of The Thing based on the novella by John W. Campbell (a deeply prob... more J ohn Carpenter's adaptation of The Thing based on the novella by John W. Campbell (a deeply problematic writer due to his racism and attraction to pseudoscience) titled Who Goes There? (1938) and premiered on June 25th, 1982-in an event hosted by the queen of scream, Elvira and on the same day as Blade Runner. The film broke new ground in the realm of sci-fi-horror while creating distance from its connection to the original source. Equipped with the magic of the movie make-up and special effects of Rob Bottin, Carpenter's adaptation brought a sense of realism, gore, and hideous alien monstrosity that stood in stark relief from the Campbell's novella, as well as Christian Nyby's previous 1951 adaptation, The Thing from Another World, both of which featured a three-eyed, humanoid alien. It was also a harsh departure from the endearing alien of Steven Spielberg's E.T., released just a few weeks prior. Although Carpenter's contrasting approach from these examples gave The Thing a much-increased sense of tension and grotesqueness, such features were initially seen as more of a detriment to the final cut as they were any indication of his directorial and creative talents. This was due in large part to the visceral effect his "disgusting" and "repellant" alien transformation scenes had on some critics and viewers, even prompting Roger Ebert to call it "the most nauseating thing I've ever seen on a movie screen." At the time of The Thing's release, it's useful to also note that although Carpenter had by that point directed Halloween, The Fog and Escape From New York (also with Kurt Russell), none had achieved the respect and accolades that would be bestowed, bringing him recognition as one of the most revered contemporary American filmmakers. An ascent that made the possessive form of his name, "John Carpenter's," synonymous with the best in modern sci-fi horror and making this accreditation within his film's titles a common feature.
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
Viewers continue to be drawn into what is now a once future world by Vangelis' (RIP) brooding and... more Viewers continue to be drawn into what is now a once future world by Vangelis' (RIP) brooding and swanky electronic score within a striking opening scene depicting a dark, ominous cityscape draped in smog and cut through with fiery bursts from smokestacks towering above even the highest of this future LA's high-rises. It's a scene that follows Dick's depiction of a dystopian future choked with the detritus of the physical world, which he termed "kipple" and set in a San Francisco cast in physical and spiritual darkness, rife with pollution in the wake of a nuclear war dubbed "World War Terminus." With the renewed possibility of the use of nuclear weapons made all the more real with Russia's latest offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, we are reminded that this is a threat humanity will always have to live with. The initial scene of Scott's film is preceded by an opening crawl of roll-up text establishing the speculative basis of his cinematic story world. His is one centered around strides in "Robot evolution," and the creation of a new model of super intelligent androids that are "virtually identical to a human-known as a Replicant." The near future of Scott's envisioning operates in a context in which human ingenuity and technological progress, represented by the Tyrell Corporation (Rosen Association in Dick's original) and led by a genius bioengineer who is so unlike the nouveau riche tech figureheads and click-bait hustlers of today.
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
In the final scenes of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, when called upon to save the world from it... more In the final scenes of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, when called upon to save the world from its imminent destruction by the force supernatural, transcendental chaos and evil, Leeloo, the incarnation of the titular Fifth Element-a human manifestation of the perfect being of divine life-poses the question: "What's the use in saving life when you see what you do with it?" She is prompted to ask this question after ruminating over a crash course on human history when nearing the end of an alphabetic tour of entries on an online encyclopedia (and no, it wasn't Wikipedia as that platform wasn't launched until 2001) upon encountering the entry for "War." In so doing, Leeloo, with a style provided by Jean Paul Gaultier that defined a generation, is faced with the enormity of the known litany of destructiveness, horrors, suffering and cruelty that we humans have inflicted on each other, ourselves, throughout recorded history. A wreckage, as Walter Benjamin famously called it, that has only grown larger in scale and lethality, just as the evil force depicted in the film, with each new advance in technology and the so-called march of human progress. Now, just twenty-five years after film's release on May 9 , 1997, it's a question that has grown only more pointed and ironic. That the film's ultimate hero and savior of humankind, Leeloo, is played by Ukrainianborn, Milla Jovovich, makes this question all the more relevant and urgent as the world continues to watch through the panoptical gaze of digital surveillance in all its forms and 24-hours news as the city of her birth, Kyiv (Kiev), as well as Bucha, Mariupol and other cities in Eastern Ukraine, are relentlessly and brutally attacked by invading Russian forces in a renewed military offensive that began on February 24, 2022. Speaking out again these acts of inhumanity, Jovovich stated, "I am heartbroken and dumbstruck trying to process the events of this week in my birthplace of Ukraine. My country and people being bombed. Friends and family in hiding. My blood and my roots come from both Russia and Ukraine. I am torn in two as I watch the horror unfolding, the country being destroyed, families being displaced, their whole life lying in charred fragments around them." To place all of our focus just upon these recent examples of the horrors of modern warfare would be to minimize the enormous suffering and loss of life due to a myriad of different forms of human violence that societies have been subjected to over the 25 years since Leeloo posed her question.
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
Paul Thomas Anderson claimed in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview to have first encountered the work... more Paul Thomas Anderson claimed in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview to have first encountered the work of Thomas Pynchon in high school-an impressive selection on any list of youthful literary explorations. The reading experience that Anderson shares would seem exceedingly uncommon now in an American educational system increasingly surveilled by political ideologues, uninformed school boards and fascistic academic watch groups that exert pressure and attempt to restrict access to a whole host of renowned writers and thinkers who may be seen as challenging conventional thinking. The climate of hostility to critical thinking and the celebration of unabashed anti-intellectualism, which continues to spread, perhaps, as another type of epidemic, is indicative of increasingly strenuous and belligerent efforts to inhibit intellectual freedom across the country. The chilling effects of these concerted and well-coordinated efforts, often cloaked behind a facade of faux-grassroots organization, to restrict access to literary, philosophical and scientific texts that challenge dominant histories, conventional ideas and religious orthodoxies have given rise to a social milieu that seems more and more like a parody of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy.
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
S tanisław Lem's science fiction masterpiece, Solaris (1961), begins "at 19.00 hours, ship's time... more S tanisław Lem's science fiction masterpiece, Solaris (1961), begins "at 19.00 hours, ship's time" with the psychologist, Kris Kelvin, arriving at a spacecraft being readied to carry him to a space station orbiting a mysterious planet known as Solaris. Kelvin is departing to investigate some strange occurrences that have happened there and the disturbing effects they've had on the crew. In Andrei Tarkovsky's classic film 'based on' Lem's novel (1972), which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival this month fifty years ago and selected for the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury prize, Kelvin isn't blasted into space until more than 40 minutes into the 166-minute epic. The earthly scenes Tarkovsky appended to Lem's story, and which Lem was decidedly not a fan of, is one of the features that gives the film its Tarkovskian anti-sci-fi character-as sf was not a genre that interested him, in creating such a visually breath-taking and profoundly philosophical film. Tarkovsky's use of editing and montage in the film's opening sequence cuts between images of nature starting with undulating aquatic plants beneath gently flowing water, to the edge and the emergent reeds and grasses growing there, before panning to a man standing in quiet contemplation at the edge of the stream-a world animated by transmotion. The montage continues with the introduction of the sounds of birds and another cut to the man, whom we soon learn is the protagonist, Kelvin, now in a stand of cottonsedge with the camera panning up as he walks away. The scene takes us further into a landscape that begins to feel like a fairy tale as a horse trots by while Kelvin traverses a landscape that is clearly no longer wild. He comes to the edge of a pond with a quaint house across in the background-Kelvin's father's dacha. These trappings of human culture and the domestication of nature are met with the sound of an arriving car, pulling Kelvin, and the viewer, from their meditations. It's a brilliant opening sequence in which the sublime images of a bucolic environment establish the centrality of the natural world, with the film's protagonist cast as a thoughtful man of duty ready to travel through the nebulous regions of space for the betterment of scientific knowledge. More broadly, the scene conveys a more portentous edge by drawing subtle attention to humanity's estrangement from the natural world and our disruptive place in this order. That Kelvin and the other characters we encounter in these scenes stand as unified figures within this environment, like those of Japanese Zen Buddhist landscape paintings or Pieter Bruegel's sprawling series of panels, Months, depicting the activities of commonplace Belgian villagers in the 16 century (more on this later), highlights the unassuming splendor of the natural world. Images that further emphasize features of a th Reproduction The sublime images of a bucolic environment establish the centrality of the natural world, with the film's protagonist cast as a thoughtful man of duty ready to travel through the nebulous regions of space for the betterment of scientific knowledge.
Hollywood Progressive, 2022
Center opened its doors to great fanfare with a renewed mission to serve as stewards of "Colorado... more Center opened its doors to great fanfare with a renewed mission to serve as stewards of "Colorado's historic treasures." The $110 million dollar building, designed in the shape of the state of Colorado itself, replaced the previous Colorado Historical Society Museum which was described by Edward Rothstein in the New York Times as a facility that "proved disappointing, attracting no local audience of any significance beyond school trips." Seeking to create more engagement with Coloradans and as an attraction for visitors, museum leadership directed the creation of "all-new exhibits" with "interactive and digital experiences." Among these was an exhibit titled, Collision: The Sand Creek Massacre 1860s to Today, which sought to address the deeply fraught history and violent interactions that erupted between settlers and native peoples of the former Colorado Territory centered on the Sand Creek Massacre. The exhibit attempted to tell of the merciless attack on a peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho in southeastern Colorado Territory that took place on November 29 , 1864 and led by the Methodist Minister and Army Colonel, John Chivington. In the massacre's immediate aftermath, many in the region justified and even celebrated the atrocious violence as exhibited in numerous stories appearing in newspapers and journals of the region in the months following. A selection of letters written by cavalry officers who took part in the massacre was published by the Daily Mining Journal of Blackhawk, CO on December 10, 1864. In a letter by Colonel George L. Shoup, one of the th (Re)telling the Story of the Sand Creek (Re)telling the Story of the Sand Creek Massacre from Cheyenne and Arapaho Massacre from Cheyenne and Arapaho Perspectives Perspectives A ten-year journey with History Colorado to build more authentic partnerships with A ten-year journey with History Colorado to build more authentic partnerships with Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples and communities, based on mutual respect. Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples and communities, based on mutual respect.
AI isn’t what we should be worried about – it’s the humans controlling it
The Conversation, 2025
Salon, 2022
short stories on a multitude of sci-fi themes dealing with everything from space exploration and ... more short stories on a multitude of sci-fi themes dealing with everything from space exploration and time travel to alternate history, telepathy and the effects of psychoactive substances. This range is one of the reasons Dick continues to win new readers. It also doesn't hurt that numerous of his works have been adapted into successful Hollywood movies and TV series, all of which were released after his death, with the latest being the mind-bending stories that make up Netflix's anthology series "Electric Dreams." (Adult Swim's 2021 animated series "Blade Runner: Black Lotus" is an original spinoff.) With such a large body of work, this certainly won't be the last and it would seem that his influence will only continue to grow into the future. Foremost among these adaptations is, of course, Ridley Scott's cult classic adaptation, "Blade Runner," released on June 25, 1982 -a mere two months after Dick's death.
History News Network. , 2020
Going Blue in the Bluegrass State? History Echoes in Kentucky’s Gubernatorial Results
History News Network, 2019
From Sand Creek to Würzburg and Back Again (Our Thanksgiving Responsibility)
Salon.com, Nov. 29, 2014
The Controversy over the Dakota Access Pipeline Is a Twenty-First Century Replay of Manifest Destiny
History News Network, 2017
Remembering U.S. Soldiers Who Refused to Kill Native Americans at Sand Creek
US News and World Report, Nov. 22, 2016
The Sand Creek Massacre Took Place More Than 150 Years Ago. It Still Matters
TIME, Nov. 29, 2016
Eastern Kentucky in Four Figures
Wraparound South, 2018
Journal of Ecocriticism, Jan 25, 2014
Perhaps no subfield within literary studies has concerned itself with teaching more consistently ... more Perhaps no subfield within literary studies has concerned itself with teaching more consistently than ecocriticism. Initiated by teacher-scholar-activists, ecocriticism has always conceptualized itself as both a scholarly and a curricular enterprise: indeed, Frederick Waage's Teaching Environmental Literature (MLA 1985) appeared several years before ASLE's formation in 1992. 1 Given the centrality of pedagogy to ecocriticism's identity, it is surprising-and puzzling-how few scholarly books focus explicitly on teaching ecocriticism. Some recent essay collections, such as Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty, and Karla Armbruster's The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place (U of Georgia P 2012) include selections devoted to pedagogy. Nevertheless, only a handful of studies systematically examine eco-pedagogy. Fewer still tackle the tricky question of how we might measure its outcomes. To some extent, the dearth of literature on teaching ecocriticism may reflect a tacit consensus among ecocritics that (of course) teaching is important and that (of course) developing students' ecological consciousness is its primary goal. More likely, though, this gap reflects changes in the field of ecocriticism itself, which has evolved in the past decade at a truly remarkable pace. In an earlier moment of "first wave" ecocriticism, would-be writers and editors could assume an audience with relatively similar institutional contexts and classroom objectives. As the 2008 MLA collection Teaching North American Environmental Literature attests, early literature and the environment courses tended to feature British and American nature writing, and tended to favor place-based or "field work" methods. 2 A fairly narrow canon and set of objectives prevailed. Today, however, "green" literature classrooms are just as likely to feature Margaret Atwood and Indra Sinha as Thoreau and Wordsworthto be "glocal," rather than local, in outlook. Hence, it is difficult to generalize about what "teaching ecocriticism" entails, let alone offer prescriptive advice on how to teach ecocriticism. Greg Garrard's Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies undertakes the formidable task of classifying today's varied ecocritical pedagogies. While the essays in this collection lack the quantitative rigor Garrard has called for elsewhere, 3 they nevertheless offer thoughtful, theoretically-informed guidance useful to both newer and more experienced instructors. The collection is divided into three sections, which, as Garrard explains in his introduction, correspond to some of the major challenges confronted by ecocritical pedagogy (and by ecocriticism more broadly). Essays in the first section, "Scoping Scales," offer various takes on "scaling" ecocritical inquiry for different purposes. Scale in this
American Book Review 38.1 (2017): 9-10.
Studies in American Indian Literatures 27:3 (2015)
The Journal of American Culture 38:2 (2015)
Journal of Ecocriticism 6:1 (2014)
Review of Buried in Shades of Night -- European Journal of American Studies
Christina Dokou, European Journal of American Studies, 2015
The New England Quarterly, 2014