The academic reception of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1995) has pointed out that the play addresses a number of traumatic episodes in American history, including racial segregation, the Red and the Lavender Scare,… Continue Reading
At his conception in 1939, Batman was positioned as the grim answer to an upbeat Superman: instead of an invincible superhero in bright colors, here was a mere mortal struggling with ethical dilemmas in a darkly drawn diegetic world. Later… Continue Reading
The Purloined Letter book club reads and discusses drama, poetry, prose, and theory at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. All are welcome! 26 September 2018: Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange 4 July 2018: Alice Munro, “Royal Beatings” 23 May 2018: Steven… Continue Reading
The most recent volume of The Year’s Work in English Studies discusses Mama’s Boy. In the chapter on “American Literature: The Twentieth Century,” Mary Foltz gives an astute one-paragraph summary of my argument and findings, and recommends the title to… Continue Reading
The feminist blog Stuff Mom Never Told You discusses Mama’s Boy. In postwar America, the discourse of Momism advanced the idea that an over-affectionate or too-distant mother hampers the social and psychosexual development of her children, in particular her sons.… Continue Reading
In the first half of the 1990s, Kees van Kooten and Wim de Bie appeared in twelve television skits as Carla and Frank van Putten, mother and son. Each installment follows a fixed plot development, in which Carla’s domineering behavior… Continue Reading