by Nick Smith, Ball State University Often cited as the most beloved episode of the entire Twilight Zone series, “Time Enough at Last” can arguably be called the definitive Twilight Zone episode. This episode tells the tale of bookworm Henry Bemis, whose world as he knows it abruptly comes to an end thanks to a […]

by Olivia Hershman, Ball State University Margaret Atwood has long been an esteemed author, literary critic, and activist, popular for her books of poetry, award-winning essays, and her post-apocalyptic and dystopian novels. Perhaps her most popular novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, only continues to grow in popularity since its recent adaptation into a Hulu original series. […]

by Megan Schillereff, Ball State University In the film 28 Days Later, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland give us a post-zombie apocalypse London struggling for survival, complete with a small group of survivors eking out a living from the zombie-scorched earth. Not surprisingly, these survivors have to fight to evolve and adapt to […]

“The circus aesthetic is born in a queer world from queer artists and disrupts the normative at every turn. The lady with the beard is the ringleader and not in the sideshow… a bridge into this magical world.”  Jennifer Miller (Hou, “Queer Spectacle…”) I was initially introduced to Jennifer Miller through reading “Live From New […]

By Ellie Fawcett In October of 1996, an episode of The X-Files called “Home” aired for the first time. Despite this seemingly innocuous title, the episode caused a massive controversy and was banned from airing on Fox again for three years. Today, almost twenty years after the original airdate, “Home” continues to top lists of […]

By Sarah Keck In freak shows, people with physical differences–such as conjoined twins, those with fewer limbs than the norm, and those who can perform unusual actions–are displayed for the public to gawk and stare at. Because their differences from the “normal” concept of the human are emphasized, they are made to seem inhuman to […]

By: Bryce Longenberger During the past century, fat people exhibits featured prominently in the American freak show. Although today the freak show has largely died out, the fat body continues to be on display in modern American pop culture. The issues surrounding the contemporary display of fatness can be seen when one examines CBS’s number-one-ranked […]

Looking for something to get in the Haunted mood? Here’s a list of songs compiled by the DLR team to invoke the ghosts of inspiration.