Written by Shelby Hatfield It is common knowledge that our world is becoming more technologically advanced every day. What is considered modern now is almost obsolete in what seems like the blink of an eye. But with all of our machines and technology, there is still one thing that the modern world has never been […]

Written By Ashley Starling “You’ll finish [reading] and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. […] Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them at all. For some reason, you […]

Written By Jared Lynch In the introduction to her book Gothic Hauntings: Melancholy Crypts and Textual Ghosts, Christine Berthin discusses the findings of French psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. They explain that when haunting is transgenerational, it “takes the shape of a secret transmitted within a family or a community without being stated because […]

Written By Elizabeth Palmer Sigmund Freud writes that the uncanny is a distinct “class of…frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” He goes on to rhetorically ask how it is “possible…[for] the familiar [to] become uncanny and frightening.” What frightens us most are the things which we can almost […]

Written by Brittany Means Spook (2005) by Mary Roach is a detailed investigation into cultural attitudes toward the idea of the afterlife. In her other books, such as Bonk (2008) and Stiff (2003), Roach takes a scientific approach to the subjects of sex and the life of cadavers, respectively. Spook is no different, which Roach […]

Written by Morgan Aprill A woman’s ability to foster new life for nine months within her womb is seen by many as beautiful and empowering. However, there is a part of our cultural dynamic that seems to be threatened or even terrified by this ability. One need only consider the amount of horror movies and […]

Written by Jackson Eflin The Digital Literature Review class had a visit from Anthropologist Dr. Cailín Murray on August 20th, who told us about recording the stories told to her about the disruption of a Native American burial ground.  She told us that when recording stories, it is vital to “Encounter, and document, with humility.”  […]

Tok Thompson is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. His research and teaching has focused on folklore, and he’s the author of the book Ireland’s Pre-Celtic Archaeological and Anthropological Heritage and of numerous articles and book chapters on folklore and popular culture. He developed and teaches a class at USC […]

As written by Wendy Faunce Since its earliest performances nearly four centuries ago, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has displayed a distinct and compelling surveillance motif. Postmodern productions continue to employ the motif and sometimes allow it to dominate both plot and characters. For example the use of security cameras in Gregory Doran’s Hamlet foregrounds this domination. These modern means of […]

As written by Esther Wolfe In his essay, “The Uncanny”, Freud famously interprets a definition of the uncanny within an examination of the German “Heimlich,” or “homely,” vs. the “unheimlich,” or “unhomely.”  Using examples from the German language, Freud shows that the terms are used interchangeably to describe the uncanny—what is uncanny is both “homely” […]