Scrap: Connecting the Dots

Because this is my last semester at USC Upstate, I’m taking Senior Seminar: essentially, a 15-week-long writing workshop for a capstone paper. Knowing that I was going to take this course, I brainstormed all year for topic ideas. Writing 25 pages is easy for me, but a good, meaty thesis can be difficult to come by. By the beginning of this semester, I had two ideas: use the Order of the Real to explain body horror, or talk about the dearth of positive menstruation portrayals in literature and its impact on women and girls. Continue reading

Scrap: Writing about Horror

I got some new material this week for a scholarly article I’ve been mulling over for quite some time. The essay, titled—in my head—“The Real: a Psychoanalytic Approach to Body Horror,” would combine Slavoj Žižek’s interpretation of Jacques Lacan’s Order of the Real with squirmy, David Lynch-style scenes from literature and film in order to discuss how and why this horror subgenre affects us. Continue reading