In The News: Department of English

Desert Companion

The Black Mountain Institute, Southern Nevada’s literary anchor, has taken a public relations gut punch. The former director resigned after exposing himself during a Zoom meeting with staff, prompting employees to anonymously pen an open letter that detailed “a fractured workplace rife with pay and labor inequalities.” Not long after that scandal died down, UNLV, where BMI is nestled in the English department, sold The Believer, the respected but financially insolvent literary magazine.

Nevada Independent

It’s easy to read about the massive numbers of tech layoffs in the headlines and miss something: These tens of thousands of eliminated positions correspond to people who may have chosen the tech industry with hopes of always being able to find a job. The layoff trends are continuing, though, with more than 160,000 jobs lost so far, and other tech companies now looking to weather tougher economic times through layoffs (a situation some tech CEOs are condemning). In just one month, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, laid off 13 percent of its workforce, which was 11,000 jobs, and as you read this, we all are front-row spectators to the enormous exodus at Twitter.

Los Angeles Times

Kevin de León knows the trauma many Angelenos carry. He has seen Black and brown men’s lives destroyed by powerful institutions that show them no mercy.

Today

Halloween vandals are no longer egging and toilet papering homes — they’re stealing lawn decor.

History

From biblical depictions of Christ casting out demons, to charismatic Christians in the '60s, to the story behind the 1973 movie, people have been attempting to expel evil for centuries.

Voice of America

Persuasion," a new film based on Jane Austen's early 19th century novel, has ranked among the top 10 on the Netflix streaming platform. While Austen diehards and many critics have slammed it as inauthentic, others say such modernized versions could attract new audiences to the books of the celebrated English author.

LA Progressive

Anyone paying the least bit of attention to the January 6th Committee hearings will know that if Trump had had his way after losing the 2020 election we would have gone over the edge.

New York Times

In spheres as disparate as medicine and cryptocurrencies, “do your own research,” or DYOR, can quickly shift from rallying cry to scold.

Las Vegas Sun

U.S. News & World Report recognized 23 UNLV programs, including 13 from the William S. Boyd School of Law, in its annual list of top graduate and professional schools.

Hyperallergic

Elena Brokaw’s work serves as a reminder of the tangible remains of American foreign interference and state-sanctioned violence in Guatemala — the pieces left over, decades after the collective American conscience has moved on.

The New Yorker

Fiction writers love it. Filmmakers can’t resist it. But does this trope deepen characters, or flatten them into a set of symptoms?

The Nation

Well before PTSD became an official diagnosis, his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five described the psychic wounds of war.