Writing
Erick DuPree’s blog explores the intersections of anthropology, literature, and material culture, illuminating how identity, ritual, and meaning take shape across time and tradition. Blending scholarship with storytelling, these essays invite readers to think critically and imaginatively about the cultural forces that shape both personal lives and collective experience.
Social Satire to Sentimental Myth: How the Romance Genre Distorted Jane Austen
Modern romance has rewritten Jane Austen, trading social critique for fantasy. Learn how Austen’s sharp insights on power, gender, and survival were lost in the myth of “happily ever after.”
Caged Beasts and Broken Gods: The Byronic Hero and the Erotics of Gothic Masculinity
Explore the Byronic hero of Gothic fiction—tortured, magnetic, and dangerously masculine. This essay unpacks how stoicism, pain, and emotional repression became eroticized traits, revealing the dark roots of masculine fantasy, dominance, and the myth of redemptive love.