Monthly Archives: October 2015

In class on Thursday, I brought up Stephen King’s categorization of the three types of terror while we were discussing The Woman in White. I did a little more digging into it, since it had been a while since I … Continue reading →

Last weekend I went to Target to shop for Halloween candy and decorations. I was hoping to get a Halloween themed t-shirt as well while I was there. Instead, all I could find were Christmas sweaters. There were also Christmas … Continue reading →

I’m not much of a television consumer, but recently I took the suggestion of a friend and watched the premiere of a new fall show called Scream Queens. Usually I don’t go for this kind of inane teenage drama, but … Continue reading →

In class on Tuesday we briefly talked about Asylums in England, and after a little searching I came across this article in Household Words in which Dickens expresses his views on mental illness and institutions for the insane. The article … Continue reading →

Beginning around this time last year, I started listening to a lot of podcasts. While thinking about the role advertising plays in our daily lives, I decided to focus on the role advertising plays in podcasts. Podcasts are always episodic … Continue reading →

Over the break, I saw a Walmart commercial selling “consumer items.”  These items are aimed at a target audience of consumers rather than users because the items Walmart advertised are seasonal and not reusable. The goal of the commercial was … Continue reading →

For an hour and a half tonight, I sat in a great room in the Kissam Center listening to a jazz concert that quickly turned into a jam session. It began as a scheduled event with three blair students, playing … Continue reading →

Holidays have long been associated with feasting throughout the world. Christmas in particular is thematically a time of abundance and celebration that centers around food. Aside from a central Christmas meal, the giving of food as gifts is a common … Continue reading →

In a recent essay by Emily Nussbaum in the New Yorker, Nussbaum tracks how advertising fits in with television and how, as the television viewer has become increasingly able to bypass commercials, the television business model has changed. Nussbaum writes, … Continue reading →

In Oliver Twist, Dickens’ two main female characters are essentially foils of each other–the chaste Rose and the prostitute Nancy. Clearly, this says a lot about how women were valued in the mid-18th century. Rose, who, despite her uncertain heritage, … Continue reading →