Monsters, mashups, and popular culture
Megen de Bruin-Molé Happy Earth Day! In between conference prepping and submitting a revised chapter of my thesis for review, I took a few minutes to re-read one of my favourite childhood books: Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. All things said, it’s not really a cheerful story. A boy and a tree love each other and have happy times playing … Read more
Whereas this week I’m busy with preparations for two conference presentations at guest universities, at the end of March I was a passive observer at two separate sets of conferences, both at my very own Cardiff University. My department hosted the ‘Roland Barthes at 100’ conference, the School of Planning and Geography across the way held a ‘Spaces of Attunement’ symposium, and … Read more
This week’s post will be quick, both because I’m hard at work on research deadlines again after Easter, and because the weather outside is too beautiful to waste any more time typing indoors than absolutely necessary. Sunny weather is incredibly precious here in Northern Europe, and you never know how much of it you’ll get … Read more
Seeing as today is April Fool’s Day (or April Fools’ Day, as Wikipedia pointedly suggests I should be apostrophising it), and most of the commentary on the day’s festivities seems to border on despair and desperation, I thought it might be fun to post something about the uses and limits of humour. The line between what’s … Read more
So. After a week’s hiatus due to a bout of the flu, I’m back (sort of). I watched a lot of Netflix while in bed, mainly Adventure Time, which I’m even more excited about since I discovered it’s post-apocalyptic, and I picked up some digital downloads for entertainment as well. One of the films on my … Read more
Terry Pratchett’s publisher just announced that the Discworld author, who spent many years struggling with Alzheimer’s, has passed away. He was only 66. I have no words at the moment to express the loss that I – or that many other fans – will feel at this moment. I can only offer my heartfelt thanks for the many … Read more
Happy World Book Day (a few days late, and also only in the UK and Ireland)! This week’s post will be a short one, because I’ve got a big deadline on Friday that I should be focusing on, but I’ll try to start you off on an interesting trajectory. Naturally, the part of Book Day most people … Read more
This post originally appeared on Social Media Skills for Students, a comprehensive website that hosts how-to guides for and reviews of the most popular forms of social media. It also provides firsthand experiences, opinions, and advice from students and staff who use social media in teaching, learning, research, and other professional capacities, as well as showcasing … Read more
So the Oscars were on over the weekend. And although The LEGO Movie may have been snubbed in the nominations for Best Animated Feature, it was very present in the evening’s rendition of ‘Everything is Awesome’, which included Oscar statuettes made out of LEGO blocks and a heavy metal interlude by Will Arnett (as Batman): … Read more
This week I spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out which literary monster mashups had been translated into which languages, as well as how and by whom. This turned up all kinds of interesting information – for example that Quirk’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters are the most … Read more