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The Duffer Brothers’ Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–) is one of the biggest shows in the world at the time of writing. Centred around the adventures of a group of tweenagers fighting monsters in their small suburban town, the show has attracted substantial critical acclaim for its postmodern nostalgic.

In a review published by the New Statesman the day after the release of Stranger Things 3, Emily Bootle proposes that ‘Stranger Things should have ended after season one’ (2019).

The Duvalier family controlled and redefined Haitian society from 1957–1986 with economic and political corruption, and a systematic violation of civil liberties. Especially notable of their rule were a drastic redistribution of wealth and the increased stigmatization of non-heteronormative sexuality. Kettly Mars explores economic disparity and sexual stigmas during the final years of Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime in her 2005 novel, L'heure hybride. The novel follows a gigolo, Jean-Francois Eric L'Hermitte “Rico,” his struggles in a low socioeconomic class, his sexual exploits, and his discomfort with his same-sex desires. In this article, I explore Mars's representation of Rico's personal economy, both through his prostitution and through his self-repression, considering the economic and political impact of Rico's profession as a means to interrogate the relationship between the personal and the political in Jean-Claude Duvalier's Haiti.

In this article, I argue that Kettly Mars’s 2010 Saisons sauvages is in part a rewriting of the second novel in Marie Chauvet’s 1968 trilogy Amour, Colere et Folie. I use two of Gerard Genette’s theoretical concepts of rewriting to explore the relationship between the two works: accumulation – lengthening of the original text – and clarification – reduction of its opacity. I also observe a unique strategy in Mars’s work, obfuscation – reduction in its clarity. Mars’s obfuscation of the categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, by complicating the hero and villain in this rewriting, invites a questioning of the social structures which have created such divides and which continue to contribute to repetitive political instability in Haiti. Ultimately, Mars’s retelling of Chauvet’s Colere amplifies the original political critique, complicates notions of guilt and innocence, and serves as a reminder of the cyclical nature of Haitian history. However, given the ongoing influence of global imperial powers on Haitian polit...

Titus Andronicus is a play concerned with bodily dismemberments and other “unspeakable” acts, which, under the framework of revenge tragedy, refuse to be forgotten. What is lost from the world of the play always, in effect, seems to return, haunting characters and playgoers alike in the form of apparitions not yet laid to rest, severed body parts that return to the space of the stage, and language itself that, however inarticulate or unspeakable the act, serves to remind us of what was present before: “O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands, / Lest we remember still that we have none” (3.2.29–30). This paper examines the representation of ghosts in Shakespeare's early Roman play, exploring how perpetrators of violent acts and violated bodies are haunted by spectral returns, and to what end. Although not often commented on by critics, Titus's ghosts allow us to gain new insights on the play's textual and theatrical bodies, for, despite the centrality of Lavinia's body in the play's feminist criticism, i...

When Danny Boyle's “Isles of Wonder” advocated Shakespeare's status as the world's playwright at the London 2012 Olympics, borrowings from The Tempest received mixed reviews. James Shapiro – writer and presenter of the three-part series The King and the Playwright: A Jacobean History which kick-started the BBC's “Shakespeare Unlocked” season – questioned the choice of Caliban's speech, which, in the context of Shakespeare's play-text, sees this half-man, half-beast native of the island plotting to kill his colonist ruler, Prospero: “Why you would choose Caliban's lines as, in a sense, a kind of anthem for the Olympics, I'm not sure […] I guess they wanted to rip them out of context and talk about how magical a place the British Isles are” (qtd in Florek). This certainly proved to be the case. With Kenneth Branagh delivering his lines while dressed as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Timothy Spall popping out of Big Ben to recite Shakespeare in the guise of Winston Churchill, Caliban's tale of “a thousand twang...

MANY DIRECTORS of nursing will, like me, have read with interest the Healthcare Commission ( 2007 ) report into the outbreaks of Clostridium difficile at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, Kent, and, being responsible to their trust boards for infection control, will have reassessed their trusts' policies in light of its recommendations.

MANY DIRECTORS of nursing will, like me, have read with interest the Healthcare Commission ( 2007 ) report into the outbreaks of Clostridium difficile at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, Kent, and, being responsible to their trust boards for infection control, will have reassessed their trusts' policies in light of its recommendations.

Melanomas demonstrate chromosomal instability (CIN). In fact, CIN can be used to differentiate melanoma from benign nevi. The exact molecular mechanisms that drive CIN in melanoma have yet to be fully elucidated. Cancer/testis antigens are a unique group of germ cell proteins that are found to be primarily expressed in melanoma as compared to benign nevi. The abnormal expression of these germ cell proteins, normally expected only in the testis and ovaries, in somatic cells may lead to interference with normal cellular pathways. Germ cell proteins that may be particularly critical in CIN are meiosis proteins. Here, we review pathways unique to meiosis with a focus on how the aberrant expression of meiosis proteins in normal mitotic cells “meiomitosis” could impact chromosomal instability in melanoma and other cancers.