Essays - Blog Posts
i don’t know how anyone could possibly risk plagiarising on purpose like i am so god damn terrified of accidental plagiarism that every time i submit something on turnitin i can literally feel my individual arm hairs standing on end as i wait for the police to show up at my door and arrest me for writing a string of words too similar to some paper about the mating habits of hoot owls from 1965
Im writing an expanded essay from my post about Love, Vulnerability and Blindfolds in jjk.
I need help answering these questions
Love
What is love?
How is love seen in (mainstream) society?
How is love thought of by allo people (people who're not a-spec)?
How is love thought of by a-spec people?
How is love represented in jjk?
What do the characters of jjk think of love?
What do they say about it?
Blindfolds
What is a blindfold?
What does it do?
How is it used?
Who wears them?
Why are they important?
Who do the characters of jjk associate blindfolds with?
Why is it/that character important?
Vulnerability
What does it mean to be vulnerable?
How does mainstream society see vulnerability?
Who seems to be (the most) vulnerable in society/jjk?
What does the protag/mento Gojo Satoru think of vulnerability?
What does Ryomen Sukuna think if vulnerability?
What does he do when faced with vulnerability?
Has he ever been vulnerable before?
Answer any and all questions youd like. I'm just gonna write an extended essay on the topic
What is with the Dreamers' Houses?!?! Part 4.0 : What We Know that We Don't Know
At last! We have analyzed all the Dreamers' houses!
One last thing about the design of the Dreamer's houses and how they reflect each Dreamer's character. Throughout this analysis, we have been discussing what we can tell about the Dreamer's character from what we see, but we have yet to discuss about what we don't see.
With Herrah, we see the entirety of her den while we are barred from most of the Village. As such, we can guess more about Herrah's character than her people. Though I must admit that there is a bunch we can’t see due to being part dragon and part plant, but not part spider. Which means we can’t climb to the ceiling. But we DO see most of her house compared to most of the Dreamers. How this translates to the essay is all that we don’t see of Herrah is because we don’t have access to Weaver culture.
But alas, I still must guess how much we don’t know we don’t have access to in Herrah’s den. We must be missing more than Hornet's baby clothes!
With Monomon, we can guess that there is more to the Achieves, such as the classrooms, but that is a mere guess so we cannot comment on Monomon's character in that regard. But with Lurien…
We are canonically barred from seeing the entire Spire.
The green arrow is pointing to another hallway which we cannot enter in game. We know that this is another hallway as the wallpaper design is blurred out due to distance, unlike the wallpaper right next to Little Knight.
For reference, this screenshot was taken right after you successfully got past the part which requires Monarch Wings and takes you up into Lurien's Spire. AKA. Right at the bottom of the Spire. Which means THERE ARE ENTIRE SECTIONS OF THE WATCHER'S SPIRE RIGHT UP TO THE BALLROOM WHICH WE DON'T SEE! Check this map here!
Yellow marks the Door on the second level. Blue is the entire area that we are barred from seeing.
This is not the only section we are barred from seeing.
The Red is the entire section of the Spire which we don't see. Remember, we only go up the elevator to Lurien which is reflected in the map.
Now, do you remember these hallway pictures I showed you? The ones where Team Cherry showed 3-D in a 2-D world?
In order to achieve this effect, that window must be some ways away from the main hallway where we are standing. Far enough to create enough distance for a hallway by the window. Meaning there is a WHOLE ANOTHER HALLWAY leading who knows where!
There is another possible section of the Spire that we are unable to access.
These appear to be supporting the Watcher's Spire. Now, they could either be pillars and thus inaccessible to anyone, not just the player. Or, they are other towers supporting the main tower to the Spire, which means that not only is there entire section worth the height of the main Spire which we can't see, but whole towers as well!
Again, this is speculation. If anything, these towers outside Lurien's Spire are most likely supports for his own Spire as something needs to support the weight of the tallest spire in the City.
And we haven’t even touched the rooms belonging to the servants!
Remember this?
From: Hollow Knight: How To Defeat The Watcher Knights
This hiddie hole belongs to the rope that holds the chandelier which we can drop on one of the Watcher Knights, dropping the 6 bosses to 5 bosses.
How many hidden corners and passages are in the Watcher’s Spire? How many are we unaware of? Does every chandelier have a little hiddie hole like this one? Did Lurien ever use one of these servant passages and hiddie holes himself?
Now what about the Watcher Knights themselves?
You cannot tell me that these guys lived in Lurien’s ballroom. Where were their barracks? Where did they keep their weapons and gear? Where did they train? Surely Lurien wouldn’t outsource his Watcher Knights’ gear and training from his Spire, opening himself to possible assassination attempts? This bug had 15 Watcher Knights. I think he was concerned about getting attacked. So where do these Watchers sleep, train, and relax? We have half an entire Spire unseen.
Another question regarding Lurien’s servants. Remember how Lurien has a butler? Depending on how much Team Cherry wants to draw on medieval history, Lurien’s butler could have a different responsibility than modern day butlers. Modern butlers handle everything in the house: managing the daily operations of a household, keeping inventory of household supplies, maintain the cleanliness of the estate, etc.
Note how I said modern butlers. In medieval times, all those duties belonged to the head steward. The butler had a different job. He was the most trusted servant and confident of the head of house. He had to be in order to be trusted with the keys to the wine cellar! Or as it was called, the buttery. If Lurien’s butler had this job, then where is Lurien’s wine cellar? Where are the kitchens?
Of course, this doesn’t impact Lurien’s character too much as we don’t imagine him cooking. And we need to beeline towards Lurien to break the seals and open the Black Egg Temple, so we can’t take a detour towards the kitchens.
Doesn’t change the fact I would love to see Team Cherry or the fans develop the Dreamers’ houses more, especially Lurien’s Spire.
All the locations mentioned above beg a serious question: how much of Lurien's character do we not know simply because we cannot see his entire house? If everything that we do see speaks of a fortune worth of information, how much more is hiding from us?
Now take this to Herrah and Monomon. How much of them do we not know? What about their interactions with each other? Team Cherry had originally planned to give us individual boss fight rooms for each Dreamer. How much of Herrah, Monomon, and Lurien's characters will we never know because we never saw those rooms?
With that, I shall end this essay and leave you to your thoughts! It has been a long journey and I hope you dear reader learned something new. Please reblog any of your thoughts or ideas inspired by this essay!
If you wish to read more of the Essay, click one of these links below.
Part 1.0: Herrah's Den : Here
Part 2.0: Monomon's Archives: Here
Part 3.0: Lurien's Spire: Here
Part 3.25: Lurien's Spire: Windows and Colors: Here
Part 3.5: Even More of Lurien's Spire. Here
Part 3.7: What is WRONG with Lurien's Spire?: Here
Part 3.8: Even, even More of Lurien's Spire: Secret Room: Click here
Part 3.9 Watcher Knight Boss Room! Here
Link to essay on Ao3: Here
Why does a fucking muse have to come around an hour before an assignment is due and be like "here is The Perfect Idea"
The trick to long paper's to write some fluff To make it seem relevant, cite some stuff (I in no way endorse such a method, of course) Then pray your professor won't sight your bluff - Mod M
Highly recommend this book of collected essays written by Arab women journalists! ✨
Essays
Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love
also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!
Literature + Writing
Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag
The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*
Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*
A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi
How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik
Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone
Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman
Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom
The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*
The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes
Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*
Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*
Why I Write - George Orwell*
Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*
Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)
Looking at War - Susan Sontag*
Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz
Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker
The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews
In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*
On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*
On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*
Kalighat Paintings - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri
Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past - Maël Renouard
Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel
Cities
Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash
Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*
Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur
The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur
From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective - Andrew Harris
The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay
The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel
Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan
A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp
The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne
The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*
The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour
Philosophy
The trolley problem problem - James Wilson
A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram
Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*
Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer
The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*
The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape
If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood
Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart
The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*
The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*
History
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan
The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*
From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*
Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*
All By Myself - Martha Bailey*
The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder
The sea/ocean
Rim of Life - Manu Pillai
Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery
‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*
The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*
Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti
Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*
Assorted ones on India
A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *
Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash
Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee
Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu
The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*
Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta
Our worldview is Delhi based*
Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)
‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*
Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh
When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger
Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*
Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha
MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*
Music
Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo
Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder
The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*
Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*
How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield
Concert for Bangladesh
From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen
Gender
Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane
The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin
Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*
Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe
Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*
Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack
Food
How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)
Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee
Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu
Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*
From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*
The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*
How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*
Pav from the Nau
A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes
Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)
Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)
Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*
Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua
The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*
Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*
Travel
The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism
Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan
On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose
On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*
More random assorted ones
The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*
In El Salvador - Joan Didion
Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee
Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell
Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*
What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*
The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith
Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*
Credibility and Mystery - John Berger
happy reading :)
It’s essay writing season for tons of students!
After being a college writing tutor for over a year, I thought I would share my advice with all you awesome people on tumblr. This is how I write essays, but if you’ve got more tips, feel free to add them below.
Happy writing. You can do it!
I think I just spent like 2? Maybe more hours reading this. If you don't like essays or A series of unfortunate events, I would recommend not reading this. However if you do like both, and would like to read an essay about A Series of Unfortunate Events, then continue
What, Then, Does Beatrice Mean? Hermaphroditic Gender, Predatory Sexuality, and Promiscuous Allusion in Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket’s "A Series of Unfortunate Events"
by Tison Pugh
In many ways, Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket depicts a setting amenable to female agency and empowerment throughout his A Series of Unfortunate Events.1 The chief protagonist, Violet Baudelaire, moves freely in traditionally masculine fields, and other characters—both male and female—appear remarkably unhampered by stereotypical gender roles and expectations. Roberta Seelinger Trites defines a feminist children’s novel as one “in which the main character is empowered regardless of gender. A key concept here is ‘regardless’: in a feminist children’s novel, the child’s sex does not provide a permanent obstacle to her development” (4).2 From Trites’s perspective, Violet’s freedom from traditional gender roles enables the entire series to take on a feminist cast because such a paradigm of gendered equality is taken as the normative structure of the society depicted in the thirteen novels of the series.
Keep reading
Hihi everyone!
I’m Ela and I’m new to posting on here. I’ve been on tumblr for a long time — since I was arguably too young for it — but this is the first time I’m gonna be posting on here.
I decided I wanted to start writing in a non-academic setting; I love writing, but I have never actually done it just for fun (so be gentle with me). I am still a student though, so posts probably won’t be super frequent. Despite my blogs’ branding it may not just be f1 related, I may write random essays or short stories — just whatever comes to mind!
This is very much for fun and not meant to be taken seriously, it is FICTION, please do not take it to be otherwise. Everything I write comes from my mind and even though it can sometimes seem like ai, I just do so much academic writing that i feel like sometimes even my casual writing sounds a little… intense. I have a very strong disdain for AI (ethically and just actual beef (dont get me started)).
ALSO, English is not my first language so please excuse any grammar mistakes :)) Anyways, happy reading. Constructive criticism is always welcome!
Lots of love,
Ela
LITERATURE
House Mothers and Haunted Daughters: Shirley Jackson and Female Gothic (1996)
"No proper feeling for her house": The Relational Formation of White Womanliness in Shirley Jackson's Fiction (2013)
WALKING ALONE TOGETHER: FAMILY MONSTERS IN "THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE" (2014)
"Some-are like My Own—": Emily Dickinson's Christology of Embodiment (2004)
A CIRCUMFERENCE OF EMILY DICKINSON (1973)
TWO WOMEN: THE STUDY OF THE DEATH THEME IN EMILY DICKINSON AND EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1967)
ECCENTRICITIES IN EMILY DICKINSON'S NATURE POETRY (1986)
Presence and Place in Emily Dickinson's Poetry (1984)
The Development of Dickinson's Style (1988)
The Riddles of Emily Dickinson (1978)
Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale (1994)
Forced, Forbidden and Rejected Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2006)
“TWO LEGGED WOMBS”: SURROGACY AND MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE (2019)
“I AM A NATURAL RESOURCE”: THE ECONOMY OF COMMODIFICATION IN ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE (2011)
The Ambiguity of Power in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2010)
Hairball Speaks: Margaret Atwood and the Narrative Legacy of the Female Grotesque (2010)
IS THERE NO BALM IN GILEAD? — BIBLICAL INTERTEXT IN THE HANDMAID'S TALE (1993)
The Eye as Weapon in If Beale Street Could Talk (1978)
The American Dream Unhinged: Romance and Reality in "The Great Gatsby" and "Fight Club" (2007)
Historicizing Japan's Abject Femininity: Reading Women's Bodies in "Nihon ryōiki" (2013)
THEATRE
"An Excellent Thing in Woman": Virgo and Viragos in "King Lear" (1998)
"Documents in Madness": Reading Madness and Gender in Shakespeare's Tragedies and Early Modern Culture (1991)
"Service" in King Lear (1958)
In Defense of Goneril and Regan (1970)
See What Breeds about Her Heart: "King Lear", Feminism, and Performance (2004)
“Struck with Her Tongue”: Speech, Gender, and Power in King Lear (2015)
"The Darke and Vicious Place": The Dread of the Vagina in "King Lear" (1999)
The Emotional Landscape of King Lear (1988)
FILM
Review: Reservoir Dogs (1993)
A Slice of Delirium: Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" Revisited (1995)
Review: Taxi Driver (1976)
TAXI DRIVER (1976)
Docufictions: An Interview with Martin Scorsese on Documentary Film (2007)
AMERICAN CINEMA OF THE SIXTIES (1984)
Anatomy of the "Prick Flick": TAKING THE MEASURE OF MANLY MOVIES (2017)
Films: All the President's Men at the ABC (1976)
Back to the Future: The Humanist "Matrix" (2003)
RE-WRITING "REALITY": READING "THE MATRIX" (2000)
Bringing Love to the Screen (Interview with James Laxton) (2020)
INTERVIEW WITH BARRY JENKINS (2016)
Chasing Fae: "The Watermelon Woman" and Black Lesbian Possibility (2000)
Class and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Film (1977)
Sidney Lumet's Humanism: The Return to the Father in "Twelve Angry Men" (1986)
Intensified Continuity Visual Style in Contemporary American Film (2002)
LOVE AND THEFT (Shoplifters) (2018)
Notes on the Split-Field Diopter (2007)
Positive Images & the Coming out Film: THE ART AND POLITICS OF GAY AND LESBIAN CINEMA (2000)
Rock 'n' Roll Sound Tracks and the Production of Nostalgia (1999)
The Sounds of Silence: Songs in Hollywood Films since the 1960s (2002)
The Godfather Saga (1978)
"Plastics": "The Graduate" as Film and Novel (1985)
The New Wave's American Reception (2010)
OTHER
Review: When Evolution Became Conversation: "Vestiges of Creation," Its Readers, and Its Respondents in Victorian Britain (2001)
Movement, knowledge, emotion: Gay activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia (2011)
On the Trail of the "Witches:" Wise Women, Midwives and the European Witch Hunts (1987)
"Cooking with Love": Food, Gender, and Power (2010)
Female Identity, Food, and Power in Contemporary Florence (1988)
Feminist Food Studies: A Brief History
A modern day holy anorexia? Religious language in advertising and anorexia nervosa in the West (2003)
Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1985)
The Problem of Female Sanctity in Carolingian Europe c. 780-920 (1995)
Women, piety and practice: A study of women and religious practice in Malaysia (2008)
Essays
Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love
Literature + Writing
Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag
The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul *
Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux *
A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi
How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik
Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone
Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman
Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom
The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote *
The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes
Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman *
Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan *
Why I Write - George Orwell *
Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland *
Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)
Looking at War - Susan Sontag *
Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz
Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker
The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews
In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag *
On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger *
On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger *
Kalighat Paintings - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri
Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past - Maël Renouard
Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel
Cities
Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash
Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo *
Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur
The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall *
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur
From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective - Andrew Harris
The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay
The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel
Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan
A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp
The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne
The Nowhere City - Amos Elon *
The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour
Philosophy
The trolley problem problem - James Wilson
A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram
Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls *
Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer
The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato *
The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape
If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood
Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart
The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae *
The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom *
History
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan
The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore *
The Anti-Che - Jay Nordlinger
From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert *
Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson *
All By Myself - Martha Bailey *
The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder
The sea/ocean
Rim of Life - Manu Pillai
Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery
‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History) *
The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History) *
Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti
Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*
Assorted ones on India
A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *
Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash
Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee
Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu
The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar *
Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta
Our worldview is Delhi based *
Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)
‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman *
Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh
When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger
Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha *
Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha
MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way *
Music
Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo
Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder
The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs *
Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield *
How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield
Concert for Bangladesh
From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen
Gender
Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane
The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin
Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu *
Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe
Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman *
Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack
Food
How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)
Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee
Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu
Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal *
From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad *
The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin *
How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream *
Pav from the Nau
A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes
Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)
Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)
Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter) *
Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua
The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales) *
Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales) *
Travel
The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism
Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan
On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose
On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas *
More random assorted ones
The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries) *
In El Salvador - Joan Didion
Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee
Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell
Politics and the English Language - George Orwell *
What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard *
The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith
Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia *
Credibility and Mystery - John Berger
happy reading :)
I was forwarding these to a friend and figured it’d be worth sharing them all here too so enjoy some free books and essays and things in no particular order:
Jeanette Winterson - Art Objects
Does Your Daughter Know It’s Okay To Be Angry? - Soraya Chemaly
Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Zami, Sister Outsider, Undersong - Audre Lorde
Garments Against Women - Anne Boyer
Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price
Learn Socialism Resources
Do Economists Actually Know What Wealth Is? - Nathan J. Robinson
Love Dialogue: CÉLINE SCIAMMA on Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Carlos Augilar
Teaching To Transgress - Bell Hooks
Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson
Sinister Wisdom Archives
Why Pop Culture Links Women and Killer Plants - Amandas Ong
How To Suppress Women’s Writing - Joanna Russ
Women’s Voices Now
The Life of Tove Jansson
Unbearable Weight; Feminism, Western Culture and the Body - Susan Bordo
‘A Simple Favour’ and That Whole Lesbian Psycho Thing - Ciara Wardlow
OUTWEEK Archives
AirPods Are a Tragedy - Caroline Haskins
Devotions - Mary Oliver
Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin
Nevertheless, She Feasted: Why Girls Get Hungry in Horror Movies - Francesca Fau
Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson
Sula - Toni Morrison
Not Vanishing - Chrystos
The Fever - Wallace Shawn
Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma: ‘Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze’ - Alexandra Pollard
Minimalism Is Just Another Boring Product Wealthy People Can Buy - Chelsea Fagan
AIDS, Art and Activism: Remembering Gran Fury - John d’Addario
In the Day of the Postman - Rebecca Solnit
Blood and Guts in Highschool - Kathy Acker
Mark My Words: The Subversive History of Women Using Thread as Ink - Rosalind Jana
Exploring Frida Kahlo’s Relationship With Her Body - Rebecca Fulleylove
Ravens have paranoid, abstract thoughts about other minds - Emily Reynolds
The Lady in the Looking Glass - Virginia Woolf
Angela Carter talks beauties and beasts with Terry Jones
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Eimear McBride
Why Female Cannibals Frighten and Fascinate - Kate Robertson
Lesbian Herstory Archives
Bartleby
Guggenheim Books
We Are Lisa Simpson: 30 Years with the Smartest and Saddest Kid in Grade Two - Sara David
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Her Body and Other Parties - Carmen Maria Machado
How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation - Anne Helen Petersen
Jonah essay??
Jonah is my favourite book of the Bible at the moment and lives in my head rent free for the following reasons
Jonah is very unique among the Old Testament prophets in that he's openly rebellious against God (the others may still doubt or question, like Moses, Elijah etc but this guy straight up goes in the 180 degrees opposite direction of where he's told to go like 'nope!'). The book is unique among the prophetic books in that it doesn't focus on the message of the prophecy (which is literally just a short sentence), but on the character of the prophet himself. It's intentionally designed to contrast all the other prophetic books and paint almost a parody of them, with all the roles reversed (for this interpretation see the Bible Project video)
The main message of Jonah is actually a very radical view of grace and forgiveness, which may seem surprising given that this is an Old Testament book and it is surrounded by books only about judgement and condemnation. Instead, Jonah is faced with his most hated enemies, the Assyrians (Ninivites = those living in the capital, Niniveh), who were exceptionally brutal foes to the Israelites, engaging in sadistic torture aside from the usual killing and pillaging. (And mind you, the Assyrians are those who take the Israelites in the first exile, before the Babylonians do). We may assume Jonah is being weird for not wanting to engage with them, but if Jonah took place in the modern times, he'd be asked by the Lord to go preach the Gospel to the jihadis or North Korean authorities or something like that. Jonah is 100% justified to fear going to preach to his most beloathed enemies, and, from a human perspective, he is justified to hate his enemies. But the God we serve has a different view of things: love your enemies and bless those who curse you. It's absolutely amazing and wonderful to me that this message is so explicitly laid out even in the Old Testament. (see also Ezekiel 18:23)
This book spoke to me in a very personal way. I read this in a season in which it was very hard to keep a consistent Bible reading, but the Lord used that, too, as I ended up reading it around October. With the attacks being such a recent event in the news, I was forced to think about my attitude towards people whom I might consider my enemies. And, in truth, growing up seeing all sorts of terrorist attacks in the news and hearing about Christians in other countries being brutally persecuted, I imagined for a long time that jihadis are the most evil group of people out there. But since October I've finally decided to learn a bit about what Islam teaches and came to the conclusion that Muslims are deceived in the same way as any other false religion, and that they're, in some ways, close to the truth, believing in Jesus as a prophet, for example, but at the same time, so far away, denying the crucifixion, resurrection, and ultimately redemption brought by Christ. And in my summer school in August I had met two Muslim girls and they were much more moderate than I had expected etc. I did feel a lot of sympathy towards their struggles (one of them described such a painful path to works salvation, and she even said she doubts whether she'll end up in Heaven). But upon reading Jonah I was forced to confront the fact that it shouldn't even matter to me whether the Muslims in question are moderate and amiable, or extremist and violent, because Jesus died for both, and loves both, and wants both to repent.
As a more general principle from the above anecdote, if in the New Testament we have a violent persecutor, Saul (become Paul the Apostle) repenting and following the true God, in the Old Testament, in the book of Jonah, we have a violent persecutor group of people, an entire city of people Jonah was right to see as enemies - and yet God searched their hearts with even Jonah's minimal sermon, and they all repented in sackcloth and ashes! This shows that God can bring redemption on the individual level, but also on a much larger scale (see 2 Chronicles 7:14)
Jonah really really hammers home the point of how much God cares about ALL His creation, plants, animals and especially humans, made in his image. Jonah gravely misplaced his priorities in being upset at the tree withering, when the loss of the souls of that entire city would've been infinitely more painful to God (even though Jonah said he wanted to die just from seeing that the tree withered - more on that later). I find it very meaningful that the very last verses are "10 Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" Jonah got the tree for free and still mourns for it, while God created every single human being, and knows their souls (and also created every single living being, and doesn't neglect to mention those either)
Jonah is, in essence, a parable about forgiveness and unforgiveness, not unlike the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:21-35. Jonah literally just had his life miraculously saved but he's still eager to see his enemies destroyed. God showed mercy on Jonah (and he acknowledged as much!!!) but Jonah shows no mercy to the Ninivites and actively wants to sabotage them. The unmerciful servant is full of hatred and rage towards his debtor, even though he had been forgiven so much, and Jonah is upset that his enemies had not been punished, and far too easily undervalues the mercy of God. Like the parable in Matthew, the book of Jonah is meant to make us reflect on our own attitude. God loves and forgives His enemies, yet we often act as if we are above such things.
Despite being the Rebellious Prophet, Jonah gets quite the spotlight among the other prophets, being directly cited by Jesus (as a metaphor). The sign of Jonah as per Matthew 16:4 is resurrection from the dead, and, even more specifically, resurrection on the 3rd day. On the one hand, this is yet another example of God using very imperfect people to send His message. But, more importantly, Jonah is a book about resurrection and redemption, in a much more explicit manner than other Old Testament books. While I wouldn't say Jonah is a Christic figure, on account of his open rebellion against God, he is a representation of resurrection that Jesus Himself uses as an illustration. God saved Jonah's life so as to preach to the Ninivites and bring them to repentance, not destruction. Jesus died but rose again the 3rd day to bring redemption to the entire world.
Also also also. Jonah 4:11 vs Luke 23:34. God directly telling Jonah that these people don't know left from right and Jesus crying out that they 'know not what they do'. Do remember that the Assyrians were brutal in their killings, going as far as to flay people alive. So were the Romans, with their crucifixions (the word excruciating comes exactly from this). These are examples of brutal, violent, hard-hearted people. Yet Jesus still loves them, still died for them, and even saw how deceived they all are by Satan's lies! This makes me think about verse 10 of Jonah 4 again. God tells Jonah he didn't even toil to make that tree grow. I wonder. This is only speculation. It's like God was thinking precisely of the crucifixion when He looked at the Ninivites and said those words. They know not what they do...
Jonah is an example of unbelievers being more humble and eager to repent than so-called believers. See Luke 18:13 (have mercy on me, a sinner!). Jonah shows himself to be quite prideful and hard-hearted, much like the Pharisees, but the sailors and the Ninivites repent and cry out to God the moment they realise they are in danger of death.
Jonah is one of the few Biblical characters to express suicidal thoughts (he repeatedly wishes to die when the tree withers and when he sees that his bitter enemies hadn't been punished), and, arguably, even an attempt (he is way too eager to have the sailors throw him into the sea, while they're extremely distressed to have his blood on their hands). God quite literally saves Jonah from himself, and forces him to consider his views on life.
And many many many more. It's only 4 chapters long but absolutely packed with meaning and symbolism. It's really really my fav book at the moment.
video essays about horror, fear and dread
Films That Feel Like Bad Dreams
The Nightmare Artist
Fear of Big Things Underwater
Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House
House of Leaves: The Horror Of Fiction
Monsters in the Closet: A History of LGBT Representation in Horror Cinema
The History of Insane Asylums and Horror Movies
The Saddest Horror Movie You’ve Never Seen
Fear of Forgetting
Slender Man: Misunderstanding Ten Years Of The Internet
The Real Reason The Thing (1982) is Better than The Thing (2011)
The Bizarre Clown Painting No One Fully Understands
The Little Book of Cosmic Horrors
The Disturbing Art of A.I.
Fear of Depths
Goya’s Witches
David Lynch: The Treachery of Language
The True History That Created Folk Horror
The Existential Horror of David Cronenberg’s Camera
a few more and the youtube playlist are below the cut. as always feel free to share your recs as well!
Keep reading
UNCONVENTIONAL NOVELS
[last updated Jan. 21, 2022]
(a list I put together… of lists I did not put together)
For those interested in techniques and genres that are outside of the mainstream market in the West/Americas, here’s a post of resources you can refer to for inspiration, research, or quiet support.
I believe there is no One Right Way to write a novel, and no one right way to present it either. Niche genres do exist, after all, and writing is an art form. Remember that writing “rules” are not a one-size-fits-all deal.
DISCLAIMER !! : Note there will be some overlap and you don’t have to like or agree with anything here. Also, while you may come across books by diverse authors, a lot of the ones listed here are old and probably written by white people, but BIPOC can and should be allowed to experiment with these, too. If content doesn’t interest you then maybe structure will. Form your own opinions.
but first, some recommended reading
Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison - in this book, the author explores form and pattern through close readings of various (niche/unconventional) novels.
What is Postmodernism in Literature? - a brief Youtube video presented by Dr. Masood Raja (Postcolonialism channel); simple yet informative.
Wikipedia articles - antinovel | verse novel | defamiliarization | metafiction | digression (literary) | fragmentary novel | weird fiction | new weird | slipstream | experimental literature | postmodern literature | interactive novel | hypertext fiction | LitRPG | cybertext | New Sincerity |
I’ll continue to update this post over time or write up more.
anti-novels
No rules, no problems. Take all the tropes and conventions of the typical novel and bastardize them through chaos. Or throw them out and make your own.
Goodreads: list of 100+
Barnes & Noble: flex your reading muscles
Millions article: long live the anti-novel, built from scratch
a review of Subimal Misra’s work This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale: Two Anti-Novels
bizarre, weird fiction
If you ever wanted to read or write about cat men on Mars, or a bear who talks and plays the saxophone, or people with blue butts… Well, you can.
Book Riot: 100 strange and unusual novels
Bustle: 13 super strange books
Goodreads: Monster/Erotica books
Owlcation: 10 of the weirdest novels ever written
blog post by Z. Burns ft. 7 more weird books
experimental
Hard to define but generally more about form than content. Maybe you want half your story told in footnotes. Maybe your paragraphs are separated from the main body of text and dispersed all over the page. Maybe some of it is upside-down.
Goodreads list
Bustle: 10 experimental novels that aren’t hard to read
Standout Books: 5 experimental novels that will inspire any writer
(preview) Experimental Fiction: An Introduction for Readers and Writers Julie Armstrong
sparse plot / low conflict / books where “nothing happens”
Very basically, a plot is a sequence of events affected through cause-and-effect. In the West, audiences often expect there to be a linear series of conflicts that ultimately leads to a big “showdown”. This is not a universal narrative structure, and personally I would love to see more “cozy” fantasy novels that aren’t about saving the world or destroying an oppressive government.
Reddit recommendations - “a book where nothing happens”
Book Riot: in praise of plotless books
(blog) mundane and slice-of-life SFF recommendations
sketch story (wikipedia) | literary sketch (britannica)
“I would like to read a novel that is composed of numerous very interesting facts, but which nonetheless fails to cohere for me as a book.”
● source: (blog): I would like to read a dull plotless novel…
List Challenges: novels with no plot whatsoever
Reddit thread on slice-of-life/mundane speculative fiction
recommended reading
the significance of plot without conflict - an excellent post on the kishotenketsu structure, which is influenced by East Asian values such as unity and harmony over conflict and resolution.
what is iyashikei and why should you care? - often found in anime and manga, the purpose of this genre is to provide healing
Keep reading
Journals, articles, books & texts, on folklore, mythology, occult, and related -to- general anthropology, history, archaeology.
Some good and/or interesting (or hokey) ‘examples’ included for most resources. tryin to organize & share stuff that was floating around onenote.
Journals (open access) – Folklore, Occult, etc
Culutural Analysis - folklore, popular culture, anthropology – The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture
Folklore - folklore, anthropology, archaeology – The Making of a Bewitchment Narrative, Grecian Riddle Jokes
Incantatio - journal on charms, charmers, and charming – Verbal Charms from a 17th Century Manuscript
Oral Tradition – Jewish Folk Literature, Noises of Battle in Old English Poetry
Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics – Nani Fairtyales about the Cruel Bride, Energy as the Mediator between Natural and Supernatural Realms
International Journal of Intangible Heritage
Studia Mythologica Slavica (many articles not English) – Dragon and Hero, Fertility Rites in the Raining Cave, The Grateful Wolf and Venetic Horses in Strabo’s Geography
Folklorica - Slavic & Eastern European folklore association – Ritual: The Role of Plant Characteristics in Slavic Folk Medicine, Animal Magic
Esoterica - The Journal of Esoteric Studies – The Curious Case of Hermetic Graffiti in Valladolid Cathedral
The Esoteric Quarterly
Mythological Studies Journal
Luvah - Journal of the Creative Imagination – A More Poetical Character Than Satan
Transpersonal Studies – Shamanic Cosmology as an Evolutionary Neurocognitive Epistemology, Dreamscapes
Beyond Borderlands – tumblr
Paranthropology
GOLEM - Journal of Religion and Monsters – The Religious Functions of Pokemon, Anti-Semitism and Vampires in British Popular Culture 1875-1914
Correspondences - Online Journal for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism – Kriegsmann’s Philological Quest for Ancient Wisdom
– History, Archaeology
Adoranten - pre-historic rock art
Chitrolekha - India art & design history – Gomira Dance Mask
Silk Road – Centaurs on the Silk Road: Hellenistic Textiles in Western China
Sino-Platonic - East Asian languages and civilizations – Discursive Weaving Women in Chinese and Greek Traditions
MELA Notes - Middle East Librarians Association
Didaskalia - Journal for Ancient Performance
Ancient Narrative - Greek, Roman, Jewish novelistic traditions – The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel
Akroterion - Greek, Roman – The Deer Hunter: A Portrait of Aeneas
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies – Erotic and Separation Spells, The Ancients’ One-Horned Ass
Roman Legal Tradition - medieval civil law – Between Slavery and Freedom
Phronimon - South African society for Greek Philosophy and the Humanities – Special Issue vol. 13 #2, Greek philosophy in dialogue with African+ philosophy
The Heroic Age - Early medieval Northwestern Europe – Icelandic Sword in the Stone
Peregrinations - Medieval Art and Architecture – Special Issue vol. 4 #1, Mappings
Tiresas - Medieval and Classical – Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages
Essays in Medieval Studies – The Female Spell-caster in Middle English Romances, The Sweet Song of Satan
Hortulus - Medieval studies – Courtliness & the Deployment of Sodomy in 12th-Century Histories of Britain, Monsters & Monstrosities issue, Magic & Witchcraft issue
Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU
Medieval Archaeology – Divided and Galleried Hall-Houses, The Hall of the Knights Templar at Temple Balsall
Medieval Feminist Forum – multiculturalism issue; Gender, Skin Color and the Power of Place … Romance of Moriaen, Writing Novels About Medieval Women for Modern Readers, Amazons & Guerilleres
Quidditas - medieval and renaissance
Medieval Warfare
The Viking Society - ridiculous amount of articles from 1895-2011
Journals (limited free/sub/institution access)
Al-Masaq - Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean – Piracy as Statecraft: The Policies of Taifa of Denia, free issue
Mythical Creatures of Europe - article + map
Folklore - limited free access – Volume 122 #3, On the Ambiguity of Elves
Digital Philology - a journal of medieval cultures – Saracens & Race in Roman de la Rose Iconography
Pomegranate - International Journal for Pagan Studies
Transcultural Psychiatry
European Journal of English Studies – Myths East of Venice issue, Esotericism issue
Books, Texts, Images etc. – Folklore, Occult etc.
Magical Gem Database - Greek/Egyptian gems & talismans [x] [x]
Biblioteca Aracana - (mostly) Greek pagan history, rituals, poetry etc. – Greater Tool Consecration, The Yew-Demon
Curse Tablets from Roman Britain - [x]
The Gnostic Society Library – The Corpus Hermeticum, Hymn of the Robe of Glory
Grimoar - vast occult text library – Grimoires, Greek & Roman Necromancy, Queer Theology, Ancient Christian Magic
Internet Sacred Text Archive - religion, occult, folklore, etc. ancient texts
Verse and Transmutation - A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry
– History
The Internet Classics Archive - mainly Greco-Roman, some Persian & Chinese translated texts
Bodleian Oriental Manuscript Collection - [x] [x] [x]
Virtual Magic Bowl Archive - Jewish-Aramaic incantation bowl text and images [x] [x]
Vindolanda Tablets - images and translations of tablets from 1st & 2nd c. [x]
Corsair - online catalog of the Piedmont Morgan library (manuscripts) [x] [x]
Beinecke rare book & manuscripts – Wagstaff miscellany, al-Qur'ān–1813
LUNA - tonnes from Byzantine manuscripts to Arabic cartography
Maps on the web - Oxford Library [x] [x] [x]
Bodleian Library manuscripts - photographs of 11th-17th c. manuscripts – Treatises on Heraldry, The Worcester Fragments (polyphonic music), 12 c. misc medical and herbal texts
Early Manuscripts at Oxford U - very high quality photographs – (view through bottom left) Military texts by Athenaeus Mechanicus 16th c. [x] [x], MS Douce 195 Roman de la Rose [x] [x]
Trinity College digital manuscript library – Mathematica Medica, 15th c.
eTOME - primary sources about Celtic peoples
Websites, Blogs – Folklore, Occult etc.
Demonthings - Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project
Invocatio - (mostly) western esotericism
Heterodoxology - history, esotericism, science – Religion in the Age of Cyborgs
The Recipes Project - food, magic, science, medicine – The Medieval Invisible Man (invisibility recipes)
Morbid Anatomy - museum/library in Brooklyn
– History
Islamic Philosophy Online - tonnes of texts, articles, links, utilities, this belongs in every section; mostly English
Medicina Antiqua - Graeco-Roman medicine
History of the Ancient World - news and resources – The So-called Galatae, Gauls, Celts in Early Hellenistic Balkans; Maidens, Matrons Magicians: Women & Personal Ritual Power in Late Antique Egypt
Διοτίμα - Women & Gender in Antiquity
Bodleian Library Exhibitions Online – Khusraw & Shirin, Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-Place of Cultures
Medievalists – folk studies, witchcraft, mythology, science tags
Atlas Obscura – Bats and Vampiric Lore of Pére Lachaise Cemetery
Essays
Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love
also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!
Literature + Writing
Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag
The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*
Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*
A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi
How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik
Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone
Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman
Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom
The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*
The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes
Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*
Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*
Why I Write - George Orwell*
Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*
Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)
Looking at War - Susan Sontag*
Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz
Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker
The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews
In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*
On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*
On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*
Kalighat Paintings - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri
Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past - Maël Renouard
Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel
Cities
Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash
Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*
Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur
The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur
From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective - Andrew Harris
The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay
The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel
Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan
A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp
The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne
The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*
The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour
Philosophy
The trolley problem problem - James Wilson
A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram
Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*
Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer
The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*
The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape
If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood
Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart
The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*
The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*
History
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan
The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*
From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*
Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*
All By Myself - Martha Bailey*
The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder
The sea/ocean
Rim of Life - Manu Pillai
Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery
‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*
The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*
Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti
Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*
Assorted ones on India
A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *
Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash
Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee
Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu
The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*
Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta
Our worldview is Delhi based*
Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)
‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*
Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh
When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger
Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*
Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha
MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*
Music
Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo
Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder
The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*
Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*
How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield
Concert for Bangladesh
From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen
Gender
Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane
The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin
Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*
Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe
Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*
Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack
Food
How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)
Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee
Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu
Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*
From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*
The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*
How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*
Pav from the Nau
A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes
Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)
Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)
Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*
Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua
The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*
Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*
Travel
The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism
Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan
On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose
On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*
More random assorted ones
The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*
In El Salvador - Joan Didion
Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee
Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell
Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*
What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*
The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith
Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*
Credibility and Mystery - John Berger
happy reading :)
videos i find myself frequently rewatching (most of these are film/television related, with some random topics and serotonin perks thrown in here and there)
how andrew wyeth made a painting
why miyazaki is a true romantic
over the garden wall: why is the unknown so familiar?
ginger rogers, katharine hepburn, and the 1941 oscars
the bisexual anti-fascist (marlene dietrich)
missed calls: a eulogy for the movie phone booth
edvard munch: what a cigarette means
parasite vs sunset boulevard: the disillusionment arc
anatomy of anatomy of a murder
saul bass’s movie posters
we’re all stupid and boring
the outsider’s guide to the social world
over the garden wall’s historical clothing inspirations
the psychology of heroism
comedy dies slow: the marvelous mrs. maisel
late night tv needs to change
the man from u.n.c.l.e (2015): style vs substance
when shakespeare got cool
the weird ways to adapt mary jane
aaliyah, britney, & the apathy of lifetime biopics
why chad and ryan switched clothes in high school musical 2
why megamind is a subversive masterpiece
school of rock’s perfect scene
the movies that inspired knives out
can 4 average people beat a pro crossword puzzler?
how david fincher uses pop music
the beach party genre
how to bring folklore to life
is the lonely genius real?
in defense of love at first sight
forming real human connections? sounds fake but ok