When I was sixteen, I only wanted one thing: to be fucking sexy. I did not achieve this. It was 2013, and I was just a suburban teen, wearing a…
Contemporaries Essays
Neither sexy, cool, nor smart
§1 It was, intellectually and politically, a dark time: 2005. In Miami Beach, a nineteen-year-old with “a rhinestone Playboy bunny ring, white stilettos that laced in tight X’s up her…
On Twinning: The Parent Trap, The Hiltons, and the White Girls Who Raised Me
Once, at ten, I cut a tuft of my hair with a pair of craft scissors. I had just re-watched The Parent Trap and was mesmerized still by that red-headed…
Have We Learned Anything?
In late November 2006, I was knee-deep in my daughter’s toddlerhood, still getting used to the new body I’d found myself in. A little rounder in the middle, breasts still…
The American Bimbo as a Site of Spiritual Struggle
Two days after shaving my head down to the skin with the help of my roommate and a BIC razor, I fell asleep on our couch while watching cable TV….
Introduction
In college, I purchased a set of heart-shaped friendship necklaces on Etsy. Entrapped in each pendant was a girl caught in flashbulb glare, all feral eyes and shiny hair. In…
Lindsay Lohan’s Splashy, Sensationalized Journey To Sobriety
Our story begins in 2006, on the eve of Lindsay Lohan’s first DUI, with fourteen-year-old me weeping over the fact that I was neither rich nor famous. “She has no…
Bodies’ Return to Physical Books: Teaching through and alongside BookTok and Bookstagram
A classics student named Esme, who goes by the username @bookswithsmee online, devotes her social media channels — both TikTok and Instagram — to the lives of her books.1 While…
Marginality and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the contemporary English Literature classroom: an ‘aggregated’ perspective
I. Introduction (JR and CLM) This essay is co-authored by John Roache, a “teaching-focused” Lecturer in English Literature at a UK university, and Cyrus Larcombe Moore, a poet and recent…
Notes From the Edge: Reflections on Black Literature, Feeling, and Teaching
With heartfelt thanks to each and every student I’ve had the privilege of working with. Last year, in a contemporary literature class, I taught Brandon Taylor’s debut novel Real Life…