BY RENN ELKINS ’20
“Circe” follows in the footsteps of “The Song of Achilles,” retelling famous threads of Greek mythology. Miller’s website describes “Circe,” a dramatized biography of the titular witch, as “a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.”
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
DeLucia, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke, was there to discuss her recently published book, “Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast.” DeLucia specializes in indigenous history. “Memory Lands” retells the narrative of a 17th century uprising in which the native residents of southern New England fought to expel the English colonial presence that infested their homeland.
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
For an over a year now, controversial internet personality and former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos has been engaged in an ongoing legal dispute with publishing company Simon & Schuster. The trouble began when other writers who had contracts with Simon & Schuster spoke out in defiance of the company’s decision to publish Yiannopoulos. Among these protesters was feminist author Roxane Gay, who visited Mount Holyoke to deliver a talk last February, and mentioned that she did not believe she could publish her book in good conscience via Simon & Schuster.
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
Most people today are familiar with the iconic quote “Big Brother is watching.” Jan. 21st marked the 68th anniversary of literary legend George Orwell’s death. Orwell, best known for his chilling dystopian depiction of the future in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and his allegorical retelling of Russian communism’s rise in “Animal Farm,” is both admired and disdained by academics and activists alike.
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
With the holidays just around the corner, it’s a great time to think about giftable books. After all, they are some of the best and easiest gifts to give: they’re inexpensive, easy to wrap and the variety of selection is just about infinite. Here’s a handful of the most popular books being purchased this season, assembled from the bestseller lists of Barnes & Noble, Amazon and the New York Times.
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
On the evening of Nov. 2, five college students, alums and professors filled nearly every seat in Mount Holyoke’s Chapin Auditorium. Dr. Beverly Tatum was at the college to commemorate the 20th anniversary and re-release of her 1997 book “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race.” The new edition includes over 100 additional pages to cover the last 20 years of development pertaining to race in America.
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
In the messy world of inaccurate film adaptations, few novels have been as disgraced as Mary Shelley’s classic “Frankenstein.” Though the title itself now brings to mind the boxy head, stitch-ridden face and ghastly green hue of Boris Karloff’s 1931 portrayal of his monster, Dr. Frankenstein’s struggle has always been much more than a cinematic horror story –– in fact, the original tale is overwhelmingly human.
BY RENN ELKINS '20
Banned and challenged books are often full of controversial themes, plots and characters. But for every person opposed to a particular book, there’s someone else on whom the same work made a tremendous impact. Here are a few of the banned and challenged books that are closest to the hearts of Mount Holyoke students.
BY RENN ELKINS ’ 20
“The future looks a lot like the past,” declares Esther Little, an enigmatic, semi-mortal woman of astounding psychic power, in the latter half of David Mitchell’s “The Bone Clocks.” She warns that “power grids [will] start failing in the late 2030s,” and that this is the “inevitable result [...] of population growth and lies about oil reserves.”
BY RENN ELKINS’20
On Thursday, April 6, the Mount Holyoke College English department hosted the penultimate speaker in its children’s literature speaker series, Patricia MacLachlan, author of an impressive arsenal of both picture books and children’s novels, including the Newbery winner “Sarah, Plain and Tall” and its sequels.
“I have never dreamed of being a writer.”
These were the words that opened the compelling, inspiring and highly entertaining lecture delivered on Thursday, Feb. 16, by acclaimed children’s fiction writer Mordicai Gerstein. Gerstein’s visit was the first of a series hosted by Mount Holyoke College’s English department, which is set to feature several other authors of children’s literature in the coming weeks.
BY RENN ELKINS '20
On Oct. 23 and 24, an eye-catching headline blared across the pages of several renowned news sources, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and NPR: William Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe will be credited as coauthor of the three-part “Henry VI” cycle in the New Oxford Shakespeare publication of the Bard’s collected works.
BY RENN ELKINS ’20
It’s no secret within the realm of fantasy devotees that the upcoming television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel “American Gods” is the most anticipated page-to-screen adaptation of darkly humored contemporary mythology since, well, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians.” With a production crew consisting of executive producers Michael Green (“Heroes,” “Kings”), Bryan Fuller (“Hannibal,” “Pushing Daisies”) and, of course, Gaiman himself, the anticipation is well-deserved — and, unlike in the case of 2010’s tragic butchering of Rick Riordan’s YA novel, the buildup is nearly guaranteed to culminate in a piece of television that actually does justice to its source material.
