Humanities Review

The St. John’s University Humanities Review, founded 2002, is a publication run by graduate students of the English Department at St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens, New York. The STJHR examines a wide range of subject matter in the humanities through book reviews, essays, and interviews. Like The New York Review of Books or The New Republic, we tend to review scholarly books, fiction, poetry, and art exhibits. We accept submissions from students and professors from our campus and from around the world. We have published original interviews with Albert Murray, E. San Juan Jr., John Hollander, Howard Zinn, and Peter McClaren. National figures such as Henry Giroux, Gayatri Spivak, and Nancy Armstrong have seen fit to allow us to print previously unpublished pieces of theirs.

Submissions

Publication & Subscriptions

The Humanities Review is published annually in the Spring of each academic year by graduate students of the St. John’s University English Department in Jamaica, NY. Founded in 2002 by Paul Devlin, The Humanities Review is catalogued by the St. John’s University English Department in St. John Hall, Room B40.

Please direct all subscription inquiries to the St. John’s University English Department office, Telephone: (718) 990-6387. Fax: (718) 990-2527. Email:umalil@stjohns.edu

                                          

The St. John’s Humanities Review Spring 2024: “Global Metamorphosis”

Introduction: Looking for Hope in our New Metamorphoses by Mosammat Sultana

Lady Hemiptera, by Easha Fatima

Nature’s Evolving Purpose: Landscape as Therapy in Modern Nature Writing, by Abbie Davis

Metamorphosis and Becoming – Within Garden Narratives, by Dr. Vera Alexander

New Molt, by Anjeanett Ang

So This is Home: Intergenerational Dynamics Amidst Cameroon’s Crisis, Relation Ties and Shifting Landscapes, by Chantel Eyong

Submerging the Record: Imagining the Ocean as an Archive, by Victoria Santamorena

suckers, by Dana Livingston

Utopia as Reality: Gabriel Bump’s The New Naturals, by Kelly Liu

GRMW, by Anjeanette Ang

“Writing Up” Through Playful Pedagogy: Teaching First-Year Writing Through the Theme of Growing Up, by Dr. Stephanie Montalti

CORRUPTFILE, by Tina Gurcharan

untitled, by Anjeanette Ang

Where is Miraji? Moons and Stars are All Imprisoned in the Dungeon of Time, by Daman Khalid

Gaming (and Writing) the System: Using Video Games in the Composition Classroom, by Andrew Schlosser

 

 

The St. John’s Humanities Review Volume 20, Issue 1, Spring 2023: “Beyond the Margins: Interdisciplinarity, Hybridity, Fusion and the Future of the Humanities”

 

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The St. John’s University Humanities Review Fall 2021 Volume 18 Issue 1: “Time in the Time of COVID-19: The Relationship Between Time and Distress”

Stephanie Montalti, Editor

Cover Art by Christina Montalti and Layout by Stephanie Montalti

Introduction: Reflecting, Documenting, and Imagining by Stephanie Montalti

My COVID Diary by Faten Hafez

The Longest Day by Carmel McMahon

2 Sticker Max by Arsevi Seyran

Pandemic Fatigue by Maureen Daniels

Anxieties and Memories of Pandemic: An Auto-Ethnographic Account of Everyday Life by Pragati Gupta

Welcome to the %^&* Show: Teaching Composition During a Global Pandemic by Natalie M. Dorfeld

COVID-19 and the Disruption of the Human-Nature Duality by Grant David Crawford

The Sounds of Grief and Time in Rebirth by Regina A. Bernard

Swimming Sonnet by Steve Mentz

When the Bookshelf Becomes the World by Maureen Daniels

Preface by Justin Lerner, Colleen McClintock, and Maureen H. Daniels

POETRY

Within Those Forty Minutes by Tiffany L. Davis

 

Honest Hope by Stephen Paul Miller

 

ARTICLES

Pop Culture Canon: Promoting Student Access and Autonomy Through Non-Traditional Texts by Justine Nicole Wilson

 

Liberatory Art and Design Education: Engaging Queer of Color Pedagogies for Creative Practice by Mel Michelle Lewis

 

Capturing Students with Comics: Teaching Race and Identity in American Born Chinese by Marie Gugnishev

 

Don’t @ Me: The Power Structure of Language & Promoting Language Diversity in Academia by Dasharah Green

 

“Trying to Make the Personal Political” then Pedagogical: Building Writing Classrooms Inspired by Black Feminist Practice by Sarah Glessner

 

Using Close Reading, Frame Analysis, and the U.S. Immigration Debate to Provoke Independent Thinking and Engaged Social Participation among First-Year Community College Students by Tina L. Margolis

 

ESSAYS

Intellectual Awakenings: Thinking, Walking and Teachings in Social (In)Justice by Regina A. Bernard-Carreño

 

Reality Pedagogy in the First-Year Composition Classroom by Jordan Charlton

 

 

REVIEW

Review of Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope by Cheryl Glenn by Kainat Abidi Puetz

St. John’s University Humanities Review Spring 2019 Volume 16 Issue 1

Maureen H. Daniels, Editor
Justin Lerner, Assistant Editor
Cover Art by Eve Wood

POETRY:
Three Poems by Eve Wood
Two Poems by Steven Paul Miller
Eight Poems by David Groff
Three Poems by Kate Lutzner

FILM REVIEW:
The Surreal World: Racism, Capitalism, and Complacency, Millennial-Style by Mara Lee Grayson

ART:
Braille 1 by Eve Wood
Braille 2 by Eve Wood
Braille 3 by Eve Wood
Braille 4 by Eve Wood
Braille 5 by Eve Wood

BOOK REVIEWS:
Unit Cohesion: Parenting and Transgender Identity in Laurie Frankel’s This is How It Always Is
Dr. Amy King

“Suffering Beyond Suffering”: Tommy Orange’s There, There
Jacob Bruggeman

Verbal Marginalization: Christina Dalcher’s “Vox: A Novel”
Tammie Jenkins

Fault Lines: Omar El Akkad’s Second US Civil War
Joseph Donica

The Time is Now: On Duchess Harris’s Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump
Ilse Schrynemakers

Inventive Protests: On Bill McKibben’s Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
Tanner Alan Sebastian

Sociopolitical America and the Weight of Deception in The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani
Simone Smith

In Pursuit of Privilege: Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stranger’s in Their Own Land
Johnny Wiley

ART:
Braille 6 by Eve Wood
Braille 7 by Eve Wood
Braille 8 by Eve Wood
Braille 9 by Eve Wood
Braille 10 by Eve Wood

CRITICAL ESSAYS:
Immigration in Trump’s Post-Truth America
Avery Ware

On Being a Single Mama in America
Sarah Jeffris

The Emergence of Empathy in the Era of Trump
Denise Ayo

SHORT FICTION:
Leftovers
Gabriel Brownstien

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Vol. 15.1 (Spring 2018): “Race, Dystopia & American Identity”

Cartherine Saunders, Guest Editor and Design
Cover art by Calia Borden

Preface & Acknowledgements: Catherine Saunders

A Review of Christina Sharpe, In The Wake: On Blackness and Being by Carmen Walker

A Review of Karen Tei Yamashita, Letters to Memory by Ruth Hsu

A Review of Gretchen Carlson, Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Back Your Power by Laura Merlin

Vallista and the Role of a Fool within Dystopian Spaces by Angela Gustafsson

The Sellout by Paul Bettany: Better Living Through Segregation by Matthew Spencer

Race in American Suburbia: Afrofuturism in Get Out and “White Zombies” by Kara Hisatake and Sarah Papazoglaki

Chicanx Dystopia-Contesting Dystopia by Charli G. Valdez

Follow your leader: NCIS, the San Dominick and Benito Cereno by Meredith Malburne-Wade

Refusing Silence: Changing the Conversation on Harassment, Sexual Assault and Rape Culture by Alissa Burger

Amid the “Whitelash”: Van Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates on America in the “Trumpocalypse” by Phillip Cunningham

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Vol. 14.1 (Spring 2017): “The Humanities As Activism”

Addendum to the digital version of Vol. 14.2

Michael Carosone, Guest Editor & Design

Editor’s Note: Michael Carosone

PART ONE: THE PERSONAL AS ACTIVISM

Regina Corallo: An Interview with Wazhmah Osman

Angela Hooks: I Am Not an Activist

Anwar Uhuru: Thoughts on the Shooting in Orlando: Autobiography as Activism

PART TWO: ACTIVISM IN THE CLASSROOM

Joshua Adair: Adventurous Activism

Shahd Alshammari: Activism inside a Kuwaiti Classroom

Kristie Betts Letter: Remember When I Tell You This Story That It May Change: Creative Humanities as Activism

Elizabeth Skwiot: Wait for Nothing: Beckett, Activism, and Why I Teach Literature

PART THREE: DIGITAL ACTIVISM

Katherine Rockefeller: Where Digital Citizenship, Social Media, and Activism Converge: @SoSadToday

PART FOUR: ARCHIVING ACTIVISM:

Barry Mauer: The Citizen Curating Project Confronts the Pulse Nightclub Shooting

Carys A. O’Neill: Tragedy Turned into Digital Activism: Documenting the University of Central Florida’s Response to Pulse

Yulia Tikhonova: Curator as Activist

PART FIVE: PERFORMANCE AS ACTIVISM

Nevena Stojanovic: On the Humanities in the Internet Era: Radical Performance Art, Cyber-Migrancy, and Guillermo GómezPeña’s La Pocha Nostra

PART SIX: VISUALIZING ACTIVISM

Malika Zwanya Crutchfield: Capturing a Black Aesthetic: Photographing Activism

Editor’s Endnote: “Education As Political Act! Educator As Political Activist!: An Interactive Experimental Narrative And Manifesto”, Michael Carosone

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Vol. 13.1 (Spring 2016)

Preface by Daniel Heffernan, Editor

The Ideological Knight: Žižek and the Batfan in the Consequences of Transmedia, by Gregory Bray

Dystopian Performance & Diasporic Pageantry: Shirley Graham Du Bois’ Tom-Tom, by Jodi Van Der Horn Gibson

A Review of Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, Jesse Jarnow, by Granville Ganter

Contested Space: The Dispossession of Forests and Rights of Tribals as Depicted in Mahasweta Devi’s Texts, by Jogamaya Bayer

Badiou Talks Infinity, by Alain Badiou

“Let’s drink to the salt of the earth”: Reflections on Revolution During the Period of the Post-Nation State, by Luis Omar Ceniceros

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Vol. 12.1 (Spring 2015)

Preface by Kevin MacDonnell, Editor

Bailey Robertson, Assistant Editor

Strange Realism: On Behalf of Objects by Graham Harman

Objects in Drag: The Mannequin’s Queer Objecthood by Katie N. Connell

No True Substitute for the Infinite: Indefinite Space and Infinite Time in Alfred Jarry’s The Supermale by Phillip Grayson

Reality Bytes: The Aesthetic of EXistenZ by Daniel Sander

Hoarding Orientations: Jane Bennet, Wilfred R. Bion, and Mansfield Park by Emilia Halton-Hernandez

Title TBA by Seth Auster-Rosen

Interview: Levi Bryant

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Vol. 11.1 (Spring 2014)
Preface by Phillip Grayson
Of Scholarly Writing and Creative Writing (An Avant-Garde Approach) by Dibakar Pal
Heidegger on Destruction by Chin-Yi Chung
Moderating Identities of Excess: Negotiating the Space between Individualism and Collectivism in Postmodern America by Lauren R VanderLind
Female Happiness in the Patriarchal Cage in Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, Middak Alley, and Miramar by Nagwa A Soliman
Human Ecology in New York City: The Poetry Project’s Cultural Ecosystem by Dean Kritikos
The Unconscious Desire: A psychoanalytic reading of Sepehri’s “Beyond the Seas” and Dickinson’s “I started early–Took my dog” by Maryam Moosavi

                                          

Vol. 10.1 (Spring 2013)

Preface by Meghan Punschke Nolan
Not Qwhite Name Calling in Apalachia by William Matthew McCarter
Traveling Circus Performer and the (Re)Construction of Self by Janine Hatter
Constructing the “Unofficial” History of HIV /AIDS by Kylo-Patrick R. Hart
Fitzgerald’s Autobiographical Essays & Over-Identification by Helga Lénárt-Cheng
The Migrating Self: Sittings for a Family Portrait by Chris Barry
Jazz and the Musical Standard of Blackness by Sherry M. Arnold
Buddhist Metaphysics & Pip’s Experience by Daniel Hermann
Whitman, Solipsism, and Celebration by Dean Kritikos
The Moral Ambiguity of the Artful Dodger in Lean’s Oliver Twist by Andrew Calis
Imago and Social Exchange in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Renee Harris

                                          

Vol. 9.2 (Spring 2012)

 

 

 

 

 

Preface by Danielle Lee
Franklin, Emerson, Whitman and the American Bible by J. D. Isip
Shaping the American Poet by Jeff Carr
Refutation of Manifest Destiny in Contemp. Amer. Horror Cinema by Finn J. Ballard
The Passage of HB2281 by Kathie Cheng
Postcolonial Iraqi Literature in Exile by Daryoosh Havarti
More than Black and White by Mel Zahnd
Jero, Cultural Nationalism, and Japanese Music by Shawn M. Higgins
O for a Muse of Fire by Nichole Peabody
National Identity & the Reference to Indigenous Issue by Katarzyna Górska

                                           

Vol. 9.1 (Spring 2011)

Preface by Anna Sicari
Il Tempo do Corviale by Paul Fabozzi
Reflections on Poetry and Language by Lawrence Joseph
Restating Romance for the Modern World by Stephen Sicari
Joyce’s Spatial Forms of History by Stephen Pasqualina
Numerousness and Its Discontents by Peter Nicholls
Ethnic Modernism Review by Paul Devlin
Cosmopolitan or Globalization? by Tegan Zimmerman
Narrative Fictions and Covert Colonialism by Sarah Bonnie
Rereading Heart of Darkness by Daniel R. Schwartz

                                           

Vol. 8.2 (Spring 2010)

Preface by John V. Nance
Preface by Christianne Cain
Preface by Anna Sicari
Death and Possibilities of Comedy in Measure for Measure by Paul Dustin Stegner
The Narratology of Mortality in Shakespeare and Modern Cinema by P. Aaron Potter
Herbert’s “Church Monuments” and Donne’s “A Nocturnal” by Laura Kolb
The Deathbed Performances of Early Modern Women by Marissa R. Cull
The Death Drive in Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra by Lynne M. Simpson
Pondering Posterity in Shakespeare’s Sonnets by Brian Chalk
Denials of Death, from Jacobean Literature to Modern Journalism by Robert Watson
Toward a Cultural Poetics of Early Modern Shipwreck by Steve Mentz

                                           

Vol. 8.1 (Fall 2009)

Preface by Christianne M. Cain
The Palimpsest of American Inscription: An Experimental Preface by John V. Nance
Identity: Distribution, Agency, and Identification by Rachel A. Wortman
Hyphenation in Cuban-American Literature by Maria Luisa Ochoa Fernandez
Bawdy Politics in Burlesque Performance by Laura Dougherty
The Puerto Rican as the Surplus of American Identity by Daniel Gaztambide
American Motherhood, Myth, and Tragedy by Hannah Landsel
William Carlos Williams and His Bicultural Heritage by Jenny R. Sadre-Orafai
Alcott and Disney: The American Optimists and Their Opposition by J.D. Isip
Diminutiveness and the Antihero by Greg Weiss

                                           

Vol. 7.2 (Spring 2009)

Preface by John V. Nance
Modernist Writers Review by Stephen Pasqualina
Shrike, Epistemology, and Postmodernism by Michael Diberadino
Reading Avatars and Writing Walkthroughs by Brian DeSousa
Emma Lazarus and the Aporia of Jewish Community by Samantha Cohen
Just Rocks by Derek Owens
The Student as Student by Jennifer Rich
Antigone’s Noir by Domietta Torlasco

                                           

Vol. 7.1 (Fall 2008)

Prefaces by John Nance and Christianne Cain
Displacement in Auges, Said, and Ranciere by Christos Hadjiyianni
John Yoo and the Public Memorialization of Exception by David Platzer
Relocating Pornography Post 9/11 by Rob Baum
Orientalism on Cigarette Packs by Beyazit Akman
Globalization and Paranoia in Anthony Mann’s Border Incident by Sean Cobb
The Limitations of Language in Sylvia Path’s The Bell Jar by Janet Stallard

                                           

Vol. 6.2 (Spring 2008)

Preface by Stephen Pasqualina
(post)Colonial Conversations, an Introduction by Samantha Cohen
Cracking Bapsi: A Conversation with Bapsi Sidhwa interviewed by Samantha Cohen
A Conversation with Ania Loomba interviewed by Samantha Cohen
On This Earth: A Photo Essay by Nick Brandt
Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual reviewed by by Granville Ganter
Why I Write Horror by Sarah Langan
War on Terror: Amending Monsters After 9/11 by Jesse Kavadlo
Moral Presence and Absence in James’ Rhetoric of Truth by Michael Modarelli
The Road to Freedom by Giuseppe Mazzotta
Us and Our Minds: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow by Stanley Sultan

                                           

Vol. 6.1 (Fall 2007)

Preface by Stephen Pasqualina
Shakespeare, Music, Identity, and Kwame Dawes’ Requiem by John Carpenter
Ethnic American Literature and Its Discontents by Maria Zamora
The Cultural Mulatto in the “New Black Aesthetic” & Sarah Phillips by Habiba Ibrahim
Thomas Sayers Ellis interviewed by Stephen Pasqualina
What Is an American? The Problem of the West by Robert Fanuzzi
Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire interviewed by Samantha Cohen
Thinking About the Humanities by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

                                           

Vol. 5.1 (Spring 2007)

Rethinking Textbook Production in Composition by Bill Marsh
Dead Man Talking by C. Scott Combs
do not hold doors Review by Lee Ann Brown
Dance as Metaphor in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats by Julianne White
An Interview with George Saunders Interview by Adam Smith
Speaking with Philip Deloria Interview by Richard Mace
“Reading Joyce’s Ulysses” A poem by Daniel R. Schwarz

                                           

Vol. 4.2 (Fall 2006)

How Novels Think by Nancy Armstrong
Hemingway’s “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife” by Charles J. Nolan, Jr.
Doing Ordinary Language Criticism by Walter Jost
A Talk with a Novelist- An Interview with Gabriel Brownstein by Stephen Pasqualina
A Prophet for All Ages by Charles Plock, C.M.
Quilombos… by André Sales Batista, Marcos Burgos, Ricarte Echevarría
Community Relations, Social Value in the Museum World Review by Jesse Van Hoy

                                           

Vol. 4.1 (Spring 2006)

Review of Photography and the Occult by Kimberley Anne Garcia
Pride and Prejudice, Adapted Reviewed by Amy King
The Poetry of Jill Scott Reviewed by Jeffrey Dessources
Poets Thinking by Helen Vendler Reviewed by Jonathan Kugler
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Vol. 3 Reviewed by Jesse Van Hoy
Novel of Modern Times and Imagenes del Quijote Reviewed by Steve Mentz
An Interview with N. Scott Momaday by Richard Mace
J.R. Moehriger’s Tender Bar Reviewed by Justyna Kret
Edvard Munch at the MoMa by Brad Hagarbome

                                           

Vol. 3.1 (Spring 2005)

Philip Vera Cruz: In Search of Defamiliarizing Narrative by E. San Juan Jr.
A Terry Teachout Reader Reviewed by Paul Devlin
Imperialism and Education in Twentieth-Century China by Arif Dirlik
Observations on Three Hemingway Stories by Elexis Coleman
Teaching Against Global Capitalism Reviewed by Mike Pozo
“A Real Freudian Case”- Anticipating the Cliche in Mary McCarthy by Tara Roeder
Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People by Berteil Ollman
Gunga Din and Memoirs of the Bookies’ Son Reviewed by Paul Devlin

                                           

Vol. 2.2 (May 2004)

A Note from the Editor by Paul Devlin
Extremities and Trauma at Home: After 9/11 Reviewed by Jennifer Travis
An Interview with Ngugi Wa Thiong’o by Michael Pozo
Learning from Charles Sanders Peirce’s Semoitic by Professor E. San Juan Jr.
After Theory by Terry Eagleton. Reviewed by Albert Colon
The Mammoth Cheese: A Novel by Sheri Holman. Reviewed by Paul Devlin
The Teammates and Summer of ’49 Reviewed by Dana Bliss
Working Through the Contradictions by E. San Juan Jr. Reviewed by Michael Pozo
The Complete Poems of Claude McKay Reviewed by Professor Barbara Harlow
Secrets in the Fire and Playing with Fire Reviewed by Professor Barbara Harlow
An Interview with Greg Fraser by Hani Sarji and Michael Hepner
the desire to meet with the beautiful by India Radfar. Reviewed by Tara Roeder
Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman. Reviewed by Paul Devlin

                                           

Vol. 2.1 (Fall 2003)

“On Being Awarded a Citation…” by Albert Murray. Introduced by Paul Devlin
Alabanza by Martín Espada. Reviewed and Introduced by Michael Pozo
The Fate of Nature in Western Culture Reviewed by Tara Roeder
Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings by Italo Calvino. Reviewed by Paul Devlin
“Authoritarianism’s Footprint and the War Against Youth” by Henry A. Giroux
Aesthetics & Politics of the Crowd in American Literature Review by Granville Ganter
Interventions and Interviews 1971-2001 Review by Michael Hepner
Left Curve No.27 Ed. Csaba Polony. Review by Michael Pozo
Foucault and Latin America Ed. Benigo Trigo. Review by Albert Colón
An Interview with Peter McLaren by Michael Pozo
Lightning Reviews by Paul Devlin
“Imperial Terror…” by E. San Juan Jr. Introduced by Michael Pozo
Nativity Poems by Joseph Brodsky. Reviewed by Paul Devlin.

                                           

Vol. 1.2 (April 2003)

A Conversation with Josh Hollander by Paul Devlin
Matthew Barney at the Guggenheim Reviewed by Derek Owens
Gregory Maertz Breaks the Ultimate Taboo by Michael Pozo
The Architecture of Shigeru Ban Reviewed by Paul Devlin
Racism and Cultural Studies by E. San Juan Jr. Reviewed by Michael Pozo
Methodology of the Oppressed by Chela Sandoval. Reviewed by Michael Pozo
Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish Reviewed by Paul Devlin
Drop City by T. C. Boyle. Reviewed by Granville Ganter
Postmodern Pooh by Frederick Crews. Reviewed by Paul Devlin
A Conversation with E. San Juan Jr. by Michael Pozo
Tripmaster Mondkey and Asian Americans” by Carmencita-Mia Q Fulgado
On Context, Procedure, and American Identity Reviewed by Paul Devlin

                                          

Vol. 1.1 (March 2003)

Publics and Counterpublics by Michael Warner. Reviewed by Granville Ganter
An Interview with Howard Zinn by Michael Pozo
signed, Malraux by Jean-Francois Lyotard. Reviewed by Paul Devlin
Vice: New and Selected Poems by Ai. Reviewed by Jeanette Lee
9-11 by Noam Chomsky. Reviewed by Michael Pozo
At the End of an Age by John Lukacs. Reviewed by Paul Devlin
Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City Reviewed by Michael Pozo
Seinfeld & Philosophy, The Simpsons & Philosophy Reviewed by Melissa Lonquich
The Autobiography of Count Basie as Told to Albert Murray Reviewed by Paul Devlin
“Asian-Americans and American Politics” by Carmencita-Mia Q. Fulgado
Conjugations and Reiterations by Albert Murray. Review by Paul Devlin
An Interview with Albert Murray by Paul Devlin