American Decades: 2010-2019, which covers the cultural, political, and social developments of the previous decade, was recently produced by Layman Poupard for Gale. Like previous entries in the Decades series, the book is a reference encyclopedia that introduces...
Destination: Moon
It is difficult not to be reminded of the prescience of Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) during a month in which two billionaires have boisterously dipped their toes into space. His early story “Requiem” (1940) from Astounding Science-Fiction depicts an era of lunar...
Bloomsday
Yes. With pint in hand, potato in pocket, and the “fine tang” lingering on the palate from the breakfast kidney, we celebrate that most epic literary holiday: Bloomsday. It commemorates 16 June 1904, the day on which James Joyce set the action of his masterwork...
What is Metafiction?
Layman Poupard worked with Dr. Josh Toth of MacEwan University to create an entry on the topic of metafiction for Gale's Contemporary Literary Criticism. What is metafiction? How is it related to postmodernism? What does metafiction have to say about modern...
“Dear Mickey: You Owe Me”
Star Wars (1977). Alien (1979). What do these two films have in common, besides the obvious fact that they are two long-running science-fiction franchises from the late 1970s that spawned a plenitude of sequels and adaptations across a variety of...
Disability Memoir Discussion
We recently had a fascinating discussion with G. Thomas Couser about disability studies, life writing, the social model of disability and more. Professor Couser, a scholar of disability life writing, is the founding director of the Disability Studies program at...