The Boys in the Band was originally written by Mart Crowley and premiered as an off-Broadway production in 1968, one year before the Gay Liberation Movement emerged. The play is set in one evening in an apartment in New York City where Michael hosts a birthday party for his friends, all of them being gay. […]
In his true-crime novel, Eli Sanders addresses the actual crime case of the culprit Isaiah Kalebu and his two victims, Jennifer Hopper and Teresa Butz. On a summer night in 2009, Kalebu broke into the house of Hopper and Butz, an engaged lesbian couple, where he proceeded to rape and attack both women and, in […]
This intriguing whodunit follows a group of five students in their investigation concerning the murder of Simon, Bayview High’s resident gossiper. He dies just 24 hours before posting the students’ deepest secrets on his gossip app ‘About That’. But who is the culprit and what were they trying to hide? From resident jock to star […]
In this epistolary novel, the speaker “Little Dog” addresses his mother who cannot read. The letters narrate the complicated story of the speaker’s family history. They are not limited to Little Dog’s life, but instead include themes such as the lasting impact of war and struggles of immigration. Whereas the text’s level of difficulty is […]
This young-adult book focuses on child abuse, parental neglect, social stratification, and friendship and is structured as diary entries of the two girls Treasure and India.Young Treasure lives with her mother and her abusive stepfather Terry who one day hits her with his belt and scars her forehead. Upon this incident, Treasure’s grandmother takes her […]
This Black Mirror episode deals with the ethics of talent shows, consumerism, surveillance, and sensationalism.It features a system making people ride stationary bikes in order to earn “Merits”, a digital currency. Living in a room plastered with monitors they are forced to watch commercials or pay Merits if they want to skip them. When main […]
The musical drama West Side Story is the recent film adaptation of the stage musical by the same name. Set in 1957, the film tells the story of territorial and personal conflict between two gangs in Manhattan’s West Side. Prior to a planned ‘rumble’ between the Jets and Puerto Rican Sharks, Tony and Maria meet […]
Cadence Sinclair lives a life of luxury. Every summer is spent on a private island, called Beechwood Island, with her family and best friends. Her family comes from old money, Cadence being the eldest grandchild. Everything in their life is cushy and perfect, or so they pretend. The reality is that Cadence has had debilitating […]
This film is a classic in the dystopian science fiction genre. Gattaca presents a world driven by eugenics, in which children are genetically selected and modified during pregnancy. This leads to a society full of genetic discrimination where individuals are hired or disqualified for certain jobs solely due to their genetic makeup. The main character […]
The dystopian sequel of The Handmaid’s Tale explores the experiences of three more characters regarding Gilead and its regime. It includes the accounts of Aunt Lydia and the two daughters of the narrating handmaid of the first book. It explains the views of someone who happened to be witness to the government takeover and is […]
This 6-part series explores the history of football in England. Set in the 1870s, two men from different social classes set out to change the sport forever. The series as a whole as well as individual episodes can be used to discuss Britain’s history, working conditions and sports.
This Victorian Bildungsroman is about Victorian society and values ranging from accounts about upper-middle to lower class. The novel follows protagonist David Copperfield through his life and especially highlights the social issues of Victorian times. David is orphaned being quite young, visits a boarding school, and is handed from guardian to guardian. He encounters middle-class […]
American Pictures is a collection of approximately 22,000 photos revealing racism, segregation, social hierarchies and white supremacy. The powerful pictures of Danish photographer Jacob Holdt were not taken with an artistic intention but rather to capture the hardship and brutal reality of America in the 1970s. Holdt’s work portraits life in ghettos ranging from poverty, homelessness […]
The cartoon “American Dream Helper” by Steve Greenberg, published in the Marin Independent Journal in November 2001, critically investigates a contemporary version of the American Dream and outlines that the pursuit of happiness can only be achieved in reality, if one just adds enough money. Based on the scenery, a woman longing for a life of material […]
“I had been brought up not to think about the Others in terms of where they came from or who they were, to ignore all that—they were just Others.” This dystopian novel tells the story of a world broken by climate change, divided by man. James always knew he would have to become a Defender. […]
This coming-of-age autobiography by award-winning author Maya Angelou features a memoir of racism, trauma, identity and hope. The title refers to the first line of the third stanza of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy” (1899), which reflected the perspective of a caged bird’s longing for freedom and its wish to escape its prison. As Dunbar’s […]
This Gothic novel explores the themes of the supernatural, masculinity and femininity, class and revenge in a Romantic context. Mr Lockwood encounters the strange constellation of people at the remote farmhouse Wuthering Heights who are all quite inhospitable. He is haunted at night by a former inhabitant of his room. Later, his housekeeper tells him the intricate […]
This early 18th-century satire novel was supposed to parody the popular genre of travel literature. It juxtaposes physical and moral strength, the power of knowledge and differences of societies and state structures. English surgeon Lemuel Gulliver leaves England again and again for travels to far-off lands. The countries and societies he visits are fictional and, […]