My student Pascal Lemaire is working on a PhD dissertation on the genre of the technothriller and I have asked him for a list of recommended novels, since I am far more familiar with the movies. Technothrillers, as Pascal is discovering, are a conundrum as a genre because although they have millions of readers worldwide, […]
My second-year students need to write a paper on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, in which they must cite a minimum of three secondary sources. I give them a list of 23 topics from which they can choose, with the only restriction that only a maximum of 3 students can choose the same topic. In this […]
When I introduce second-year students to the basics of writing academic papers and they submit their first paper proposal (title, 100-abstract, 3-item valid academic bibliography) I warn them to use only post-1995 bibliography (perhaps I should update that to 21st century bibliography?). As I explain, even though in the paper they can use older sources, […]
I’m returning to James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse, which I discussed two posts ago, this time to reflect on the strategies required to face such a long read for academic purposes. Whereas mainstream and literary novels are usually published as stand-alone volumes, series abound in genre fiction. They are sometimes bound by the presence […]