Writing

Erick DuPree’s blog explores the intersections of anthropology, literature, and material culture to illuminate how identity, ritual, and meaning take shape across time and tradition. Blending scholarship with storytelling, these essays invite readers to engage critically and imaginatively with the cultural forces that shape both personal and collective experience.

Masculinity

Queer Experience

Western Esotericism

Victoriana

Reviews

Erick DuPree, PhD. 9/23/25 Erick DuPree, PhD. 9/23/25

Queen Victoria’s Mourning Gown: Ritual, Memory, and the Culture of Grief in Victorian Britain

Discover Queen Victoria’s mourning gown at Kensington Palace. Explore how her lifelong grief shaped Victorian mourning rituals—black crepe, jet jewelry, and public displays of loss—turning private sorrow into a powerful cultural and political tradition.

Erick DuPree, PhD. 9/12/25 Erick DuPree, PhD. 9/12/25

Tasseography: insights at the bottom of a cup of tea

Tea-leaf reading, or tasseography, blends ritual, history, and material culture. From 19th-century fortune cups to modern mindfulness, this practice transforms an ordinary cup of tea into a mirror of possibility

Erick DuPree, PhD. 7/2/25 Erick DuPree, PhD. 7/2/25

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.”

Erick DuPree, PhD. 4/2/25 Erick DuPree, PhD. 4/2/25

Heathcliff: On Sadism, Consent, and the Gothic Male in Wuthering Heights

Explore the dark psychology of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights through the lens of masculinity, sadism, and BDSM. This essay unpacks why cruelty is mistaken for love—and how the Gothic bad boy became an enduring, dangerous erotic fantasy.

Erick DuPree, PhD. 2/7/25 Erick DuPree, PhD. 2/7/25

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.

Erick DuPree, PhD. 1/9/25 Erick DuPree, PhD. 1/9/25

Alchemy, Kabbalah, and Beyond: The Legacy of Western Esotericism

"From Gnosticism and Hermeticism to Crowley, Dion Fortune, and the New Age, Western esotericism has continually reinvented itself—shaping Spiritualism, Wicca, and modern magick in the search for hidden wisdom.

Erick DuPree, PhD. 4/1/23 Erick DuPree, PhD. 4/1/23

Occult Practices in the Victorian Period

For the Victorians, the occult was a way of negotiating uncertainty, asserting agency, and exploring the limits of belief in a rapidly changing world.

Erick DuPree, PhD. 3/31/23 Erick DuPree, PhD. 3/31/23

Nelros Cup of Fortune: Aynsley Porcelain and the Ephemera of Tasseography

Explore the Nelros Cup of Fortune by Aynsley, a rare piece of Victoriana blending tea-leaf reading with Edwardian design. Discover how this tasseography cup and other fortune-telling ephemera turned everyday rituals into playful encounters with mystery and belief.

Erick DuPree, PhD. 2/1/19 Erick DuPree, PhD. 2/1/19

Little Ladies, Big Lessons: Victorian Fashion Dolls as Instruments of Gender Socialization

Little Ladies: Victorian Fashion Dolls and the Feminine Ideal explores how 19th-century dolls served as tools of gender training and socialization. Beneath the silks and lace lies a powerful story of class, empire, and the making of the “proper” woman—stitched in miniature.