The OWU English Department Blog
I have a habit of needing to know everything there is to know about the media that I consume–books, movies, songs–that’s given me a lot of random and mostly useless knowledge. I read the Acknowledgements section in books, Wikipedia asks me for money a lot because I’m always looking up actors and singers, and I frequently say the phrase “I need to know the lore.”…
On Tuesday, October 14, the English department was delighted to host Clint Smith as our speaker for the Carpenter Lecture this year. Smith is a nonfiction writer, poet and journalist. Smith discussed his book How the Word is Passed that was published in 2021. He also read a couple of poems from his most recent poetry collection titled Above Ground which was published in 2023.…
The figure who inspired Babylonia was unknown to me before reading this novel, but I did recognize two other aspects of the book–the author, Costanza Casati, and my fondness for books with blades on the cover. A little different from the previous books in this series, there is at least confirmation of its titular figure being a real person. …
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel follows the titular character, Kaikeyi, a figure from the Hindu epic the Ramayana, which I’m admittedly much less familiar with than Greek mythology. Unlike Circe, I was drawn to this book (and impulse bought it at a Goodwill bookstore) less out of familiarity with the original story and more out of my interest in stories of mythology.…
My fascination with the stories of women in myth and history began with Circe. My first exposure to the mythological figure of Circe was in The Sea of Monsters, book 2 of the Percy Jackson series. Embarrassingly, it wasn’t until I read the Odyssey for the first time my freshman year of high school that I realized the “real” Circe does not, in fact, turn men into guinea pigs, but into regular pigs.…
The English Department’s student-run blog, The Sturges Script, is pleased to announce its theme for Fall 2021: A Love Letter to Art. This semester the blog will focus on paying homage to art in its every form–from literature, to music, to film, to the visual arts and absolutely everything in between.…
“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.” – Edward Hopper
I consider myself a lover of art in all its forms, but the way I engage with, enjoy, and often admire each is different.…
Earlier this semester, I saw at the Ross Art Museum the exhibit “Baltimore Lives,” by photographer, Baltimore native, and Ohio Wesleyan alumni John Clark Mayden. The exhibition consists of a collection of photographs taken between 1970 and 2012 across African-American neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland portraying the every-day-lives of their residents in their routinely habitats.…
Every year as we enter deep into October and everything around slowly begins to merge into some form of “spooky,” I always find myself drawn back to my favorite horror films, whether because they’re scary or for entirely different reasons. Jennifer’s Body, a 2009 horror comedy written by Diablo Cody (Juno) and starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried, is not only one of my favorite horror movies, but one of my favorite movies in general.…
Recommended by Miranda Alvord 23′
A horror classic for a reason, Stephen King’s It follows a group of seven children who live in the small town of Derry, Maine, as they’re tormented by “It”, a malignant entity that changes forms according to each victim’s fears. The novel thrives in the genre partly because of the masterful world-building, crafted by King in a way that truly makes the reader believe in (and feel connected to) the town of Derry and its habitants.…