Adam McLain
Adam McLain is a PhD student in the department of English at the University of Connecticut and an incoming 1L 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.