The Catcher in the Rye: A Twentieth-century Jeremiad
W hat's up with the brouhaha that perpetually revolves around this book? Salinger was writing within the most American of literary forms, the jeremiad. Why was The Catcher in the Rye banned? In short, Salinger's work challenged the status quo. And it did so in an era defined by conformity. So, the outcome is pretty predictable. As a New York... Read More.
Maus: Why it Should be Unbanned.
N ews about the McMinn County School Board’s unanimous decision to strike Maus from its curriculum made national headlines. This piece from guest essayist Professor Brett Ashley Kaplan addresses why that decision should be reversed. Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work was not only the anchor text for a module on the Holocaust in McMinn County Schools, it is shockingly... Read More.
Aphorisms Unplugged: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
T hese days, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps means to succeed on your own, through sheer will and hard work. It originally meant something quite different, but what? Sometimes that well-worn adage doesn’t really mean what our literal-minded, text-focused, Google-driven world thinks it means. One reason this happens is that, quite simply, language evolves. To further complicate matters,... Read More.
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