Reading literature through the looking glass of theory.
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Pearl is a parable: as Steinbeck notes at the beginning, the story is deliberately simple because its purpose is to get down to basics and make its point through allegory. The story is a c...
Anthem by Ayn Rand
A pre-klingon example of how sci-fi can explore contemporary cultural issues and questions of identity is Ayn Rand's 1937 novella Anthem. Her book has lots in common with 1984, portraying a future...
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Her first of many autobiographic works, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings charts Maya Angelou's experience as an African-American girl in Arkansas, where she coped with not only racial identity,...
"America" by Allen Ginsberg
Forget Shakespeare and his sonnets. Leave Robert Frosty out to freeze. The noble art form of poetry gets a major shakeup from this member of the "Beat Generation," a crowd that rallied against mate...
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Even though cultural studies often focuses on contemporary culture, texts from past centuries can be basically brought back from the dead with the interpretive potential of cultural studies. And sp...
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Heard of the Stanley Kubrick movie? It's based on Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange, set in a near future where fifteen-year-old Alex and his gang spend alternately chill at the local milk bar (re...