Adam McLain
Adam McLain is a PhD candidate in the department of English at the University of Connecticut and a JD candidate at UConn Law. He researches and writes on dystopian literature, legal theory, and sexual justice. He has a BA in English, editing, and women’s studies from Brigham Young University, a master of theological studies, emphasizing in women, gender, sexuality, and religion, from Harvard University, and a MA in English from the University of Connecticut.
The Work of Love and Sappho’s Poetry
In the English language, I find the word love to be one of its most frustrating, most infuriating, and most dynamic words.
Review: The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill
Veiled in the comfort of a child’s tale, Kelly Barnhill spins a story of gender and life, power and knowledge, memory and perception, and most importantly, family, both given and found.
Review: Forever Elle, by Heather Chapman
With daring charm and grit, Heather Chapman weaves a tale of many forms of love—familial and romantic—in this tender story about Elle’s growth into a lady—even as the text itself questions what exactly a “lady” is and can be.
Syllabus: An American Literary Canon
This is my reading syllabus for this year when it comes to my choices for an American literary canon.
Essaying; or, Why I Blog
To Think
Writing is a spiritual experience. It is a movement toward greater understanding of myself and the world around me. It is a journey toward apotheosis as I come to know my humanity better through the words I write. I write because it allows me to ruminate on a subject, not coming to a definitive conclusion, but rather opening the door to understanding, even in just a little way, the simple complexity and complex simplicity of the universe that surrounds us.
To Share
Writing is a communal experience. It is meant to communicate thoughts across words in order to form other thoughts in other beings. Those thoughts do not come perfectly thought-for-thought, word-for-word, but in their imperfection, there is a connection, a community that is formed between you and me. A joining. A unity.
To Experience
Writing is an experience. Taking the time to consider something and then to write about it allows one to experience and re-experience an event, a moment, a text.