Who Am I? A Choose Your Own Adventure

By Kara Hildebrand A literary trope is something repeated so often it borders on cliché: the mad scientist, the forbidden romance, the antihero, the tragic backstory. Perhaps it’s just natural for certain repetitions to become cemented in our literary canon, or perhaps there’s something more to why we identify with tropes enough to reuse them.…

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On Grief and Where the Words Go

By Lana Haffar Odin’s ears never stood up like a German Shepherd’s should. His cartilage was weak, so they sprawled from either side of his head, like wings. The force of every heartbeat made them flutter. He bounded everywhere, tongue lolling, paws spread to cushion the impact. On a November Wednesday, I turned twenty years…

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Let Queer Love Be Monstrous

By Medha Anoo Are you watching shows that glorify unhealthy relationships? Good. For girls, close relationships with our best friends are a nearly universal experience, and often begin at young ages. We are all familiar with the depiction of the girlhood sleepover, which included hair braiding, scary movies, telling secrets, and then pinky-swearing never to…

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Cowboy Convictions: The American Legacy of Dime Westerns

By Celeste Hoover Runaway cattle-rustlers, saloon shoot-outs, and frontier posses—these tropes and countless others of the American Wild West have achieved immortality through the dime western novel. Originally written as one-off serials or pamphlets in the late 19th century, the plots of dime westerns center on easily recognizable clichés: the ranger new in town, the…

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The Feminine Continuum: from Madonna to Whore and Back Again

By Harmony Moura Burk The portrayal of womanhood in literature situates the reader to always look, but never touch the characters before them. As untouchable beauties, chaste maids, and distressed virgins, women appeal to their male counterparts by remaining desirable, but they can never actualize this desire lest they become their own foils—the prostitute, the…

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