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The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals was written in 1785, four years after Kant had written his magnum opus, The Critique of Pure Reason. In the Groundwork, Kant aims to extend the insights of the Critique. Where the Critique inquired into...

"Shakespeare Behind Bars" is a movie documentary that tells the story of the most unlikely Shakespeare Company in the world. It was one of only sixteen documentaries out of six hundred and twenty four submissions to be selected for its world...

The Reluctant Fundamentalist joins the list of what has already proven a rather fertile genre that should prove to become only more and more fertile as time moves on and sensitivities become less delicate. The central event of the story is the...

There is an expression about saving the best till last; this is exactly what Jim Crace did when he penned his final novel, Harvest. Even before he had finished writing the novel, Crace announced that it would be his final one. He stuck doggedly to...

"El Canto de mio Cid", otherwise known as "The Poem of the Cid", is the oldest Castilian epic poem that is preserved today. It is based on a real-life historical event and its hero is also taken from history. El Cid was a Castilian nobleman and...

Born and raised in the northern state of Michigan, Marge Piercy is a writer and poet, a lot of whose work engages with political question and social dilemmas. Her novel Woman on the Edge of Time, published in 1976, is no exception to that rule.

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"The Destructors" was initially published in a British photo-journalism magazine called "Picture Post". It was commonly considered to be Britain's answer to "Life" magazine. Graham Greene, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, was...

My Brilliant Friend is the first novel in a four part series known as the "Neapolitan Quartet." The series includes My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost...

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas’s first novel, debuted as number one on The New York Times bestseller list when it was published in February 2017. Thomas developed the novel from a short story she wrote for her senior project in Belhaven University’...

Whiplash is a 2014 movie drama written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It tells the story of Andrew Neiman, a talented young drummer who is attending a prestigious conservatory and studying jazz. He is taken under the wing of a brilliant and...

"Song (Love a child is ever crying)" appears in Lady Mary Wroth's sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, published in 1621 as a companion text to the prose romance The Countess of Montgomery's Urania. Pamphilia to Amphilanthus features more...

Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (The original French title is Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes) by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a famous critique of modern society. Also...

Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman was a sideshow then a headlining attraction for audiences in Britain in the Nineteenth Century, billed as the Hottentot Venus, and it is at this time in her life that we meet her in Suzan-Lori Parks' play. Written in...

Clear Light of Day is perhaps Anita Desai’s most beloved work, notable for its lush prose and compelling, compassionate look at the inner lives of an Indian family. It is also her most autobiographical work, taking place in the same area where she...

Author Elie Wiesel wrote Night (1960) about his experience that he and his family endured in the concentration camps during World War II between 1944 and 1945, primarily taking place the notorious camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. More than just...

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, and cultural theorist. He is best known for his ideas on postmodernism, simulation and hyperreality.

Baudrillard's work, including "Simulacra and Simulation", critiques the impact...

Kathleen Raine was a British poet and scholar and a founding member of the Temenos Academy. She was interested in different types of spirituality such as Platonism and Neoplatonism as well as her scholarly writing on other poets.

She wrote a large...

Grace Nichols was born in Guyana in 1950 and grew up in a small village until her eighth birthday. She went to college at the University of Guyana, and received a degree in Communications. She held multiple writing related jobs before immigrating...

Nosferatu is arguably the first great horror movie. Nearly 100 years after it was made, it can still inspire terror, revulsion, and dread. But we're lucky that we even have copies to see today.

The film was made under strange circumstances, to say...

Tenth of December is a short story collection written by acclaimed American author George Saunders. It contains the stories "Victory Lap," "Sticks," "Puppy," "Escape from Spiderhead," "Exhortation," "Al Roosten," "The Semplica Girl Diaries,"...

The Fisher King is a comedy-drama movie released in 1991 to critical acclaim. It was written by Richard LaGravanese and directed by Terry Gilliam and was the first movie that Gilliam directed that he had not also written. It was also the first...

According to a popular story, Frank O'Hara composed "Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]" on the Staten Island Ferry in 1962, en route to a reading with Robert Lowell at Wagner College. At the reading, O'Hara performed this poem, even though he had...

The genre of horror buddy comedy was not particularly common at the time that Ghostbusters was released, and it redefined the genre in unforeseeable ways. Star and writer Dan Aykroyd initially imagined that Ghostbusters would be a star vehicle for...

Goodfellas is perhaps one of the best-known and most-loved mafia films of all time. Released in 1990 and directed by Martin Scorsese, the film is based on Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy, about the real life of Henry Hill, and it takes many of its...