Author: TheConversation

By Ali Alizadeh, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Creative Writing, Monash University Progress, the German philosopher Walter Benjamin once wrote, is a storm. The winds that propel us forward also uproot and tear apart what we leave behind. The modern world is a world of progress and it leaves in its wake the ruins of the old world. Progress, then, is indistinguishable from destruction – creative, positive and necessary destruction, perhaps, but destruction nevertheless. Culture in the modern world has its own tales of progress. Mass production of the novel in the 19th century; the arrival and domination...

By Madeline Steiner, Postdoctoral Fellow of History, University of South Carolina The scary clown has become a horror staple. Featuring Art the Clown as the main villain, Damien Leone’s recent film “Terrifier 2” is so gruesome that there were reports of viewers vomiting and passing out in the theater. And every Halloween, vicious clowns can be seen stalking haunted house attractions or trick-or-treaters dressed as Pennywise, the evil clown from Stephen King’s “It.” It can be hard to imagine a time when clowns were regularly invited to children’s birthday parties and hospital wards – not to terrorize, but to...

By Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County As statewide primaries continue through the summer, many Americans are beginning to think about which candidates they will support in the 2022 general election. This decision-making process is fraught with difficulties, especially for inexperienced voters. Voters must navigate angry, emotion-laden conversations about politics when trying to sort out whom to vote for. Americans are more likely than ever to view politics in moral terms, meaning their political conversations sometimes feel like epic battles between good and evil. But political conversations are also shaped by, obviously, what...

By Lauren Finka, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Animal Behaviour and Welfare, Nottingham Trent University There are many valid theories to explain the global appeal of cats, including our obsession with watching videos of them online. In terms of cats’ pure entertainment value, however, our fascinations are probably attributable to their seemingly endless repertoire of bizarre behaviors. Feline reactions to catnip are as entertaining as they are perplexing. When it comes to their seemingly weird reactions, their response to an unassuming plant belonging to the mint family is no exception. Nepeta cataria, or more commonly known as catnip is a plant...

By Ann Hemingway, Professor of Public Health and Wellbeing, Bournemouth University We have all heard of the psychotherapy couch, and the dynamic between a client and their human therapist. But perhaps less well known is the increasingly popular pet therapy. It is not therapy for pets, but the relatively new phenomenon of therapy for humans, which involves animals. These animal assisted interventions (AAIs) – which also include a trained human professional – are proving beneficial to people of all ages, leading to significant reductions in physiological responses to stress – such as heart rate, and associated emotions, such as...

By Madeleine S. Killacky, PhD Candidate, Medieval Literature, Bangor University To “doodle” means to draw or scrawl aimlessly, and the history of the word goes back to the early 20th century. Scribbling haphazard words, squiggly lines and mini-drawings, however, is a much older practice and its presence in books tells us a lot about how people engaged with literature in the past. Although you would not dare doodle on a medieval manuscript today, squiggly lines sometimes resembling fish or even elongated people, mini-drawings like a knight fighting a snail, and random objects appear quite often in medieval books. Usually...