Professor Lee Quinby – Spring 2013

Category: Eli Bierman


Archive for the ‘Eli Bierman’ Category

Essentialism vs. Constructionism in the Scarlett Letter

The Scarlett Letter addresses the issue of essentialism versus constructionism. Most of the characters seem to be essentialists, believing that there is a definite right and wrong, guilt and innocence; that there is sin. Even Chillingworth, the open-minded man who half-adopted Indian traditions, believes strongly that the adultery that Hester committed (though admittedly inevitable) was […]

Finding the Faults in Foucault

Reading the essays by Weeks and Norton both came as a bit of a shock to me after finishing Foucault’s treatise on sexuality. Foucault has developed such a comprehensive theory, but it seems to me as if neither Weeks nor Norton really knows where to place it. Foucault establishes a framework for understanding how power […]

The Internet as a Tool for the Exchange and Creation of Power

The internet as it now stands, serves as a tool for accelerating the proliferation and diversification of special sexual knowledges, identities, and roles. Fitting perfectly into the framework of power Michel Foucault describes in The History of Sexuality, pornography and social media have transformed the internet into an unprecedentedly effective tool for surveillance, confession, and […]