Shakespeare in Space: Futurama’s Connection to the Bard

In the 1999 cartoon situational comedy Futurama, there is a character named Bender Bending Rodriguez. He is a robot, designed specially for bending girders. Bender shares a number of characteristics in common with another famous character: Hamlet. Through Futurama’s seven season run, Bender behaves in the same passionate, morose, and obsessive manner as Hamlet time

Gender Fluidity in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will, an interesting story unfolds of gender identity, love, and sexuality. In the nation of Illyria, after a storm sinks their ship, young Viola and Sebastian find themselves marooned and separated. Viola chances upon a rescue by a ship captain, who tells her about the land where

The Games I Love

I love video games. When I was eight years old, my family got a Nintendo 64 for Christmas. It was a cold morning in North Carolina in our military base housing complex as my siblings and I ran down the stairs to the living room. We opened a number of gifts, until my brother Vincent

What is Human?

Many of the things which we may think are activities only humans participate in are not ours alone. War, animal husbandry, and agriculture are all activities that many species of ants have as staples of their societies. No, the things that are most uniquely human are not strictly for survival in the ways that food

The Erasure of Women

Earlier, I saw a Twitter post in response to The New York Times attributing the creation of Science Fiction as a genre to the author H.G. Wells. Not to diminish his success in the genre, but that attribution is utterly false, as most would agree, since the preeminent Science Fiction origin novel is Frankenstein, by

Cosmology of Consciousness

Since the times of antiquity, humans have wondered about the world around them. They observe natural phenomena, study the patterns created by them, and attribute meaning to them. Where understanding fell short, metaphor filled in nicely, giving rise to many philosophies the world over. This sense of wonder remains with us in our time, although

Putting the LGBTQ in the Literary Canon

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick wrote extensively on the place of homosexuality in the literary canon, especially in the authors thereof. The evidence of this lifestyle is apparent in some cases quite clearly, in others more obscured, but in most cases, hidden from the public view due to prevailing sentiment that homosexual lifestyles were wrong by the

Issues with Barthes & Deconstructionism

In The Death of the Author, Barthes describes that, “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin.” This puzzled me. How is it that one could view writing in such a way? In poetic forms, voice holds different meanings than it may for Barthes, yet his statement is made in such

The Left Hand of Darkness: A Story of Gender Identity

Since its publication in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness has received both acclaim and criticism. This makes sense, considering that the controversies in the book center around the nature of gender and sex, told from an ardent male viewpoint, hanging heavy with use of masculine pronouns. Despite any monumental achievement in The Left Hand

The Phantom of the Opera: A Story of Surviving Abuse

Coming originally from author Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera is a staple story that many could discuss without having ever read the book or seen the films. It pervades our time with its narrative of love, loss, and suffering. Many may simply view The Phantom of the Opera as a simple love story.