Queeriosity: A Dyke to Watch Out For

This past Tuesday, the Cole Assembly room was filled with Five College students and faculty who were there to hear Alison Bechdel, a cartoonist and cultural commentator, give a talk about her work. The lecture, hosted by the Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Department, the Women and Gender Center and the Queer Resource Center, was titled “Drawing Lessons: The Comics of Everyday Life.” “I’ve always admired Alison Bechdel’s work. I think she’s doing something really innovative and really important.

The Clean Talent of The Dirty Projectors

I’ll admit when I first listened to “Swing Lo Magellan” that I was disappointed. While I could hear the effort that Dave Longstreth, the frontman and main vocalist, and the others had put into the album, I just didn’t find it enjoyable. The melodies didn’t seem coherent enough: maybe it was that I had become too used to the commercially-produced, predictable tunes of today, but the album simply didn’t feel accessible. But let me clarify: “Swing Lo Magellen” is the newest album from the extreme

Making Missile Defense Exciting (Really!)

This weekend saw Amherst host its most famous presenter for the semester. (Spring Concert doesn’t count). Rachel Maddow, as everybody knows as the host of “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, gave a book talk about “Drift”, some non-fiction piece about something military, something blah. Or at least, that’s what everybody was expecting right? It turns out, her critique of our country’s recent approach to war was quite fascinating, and, for the average student, revelatory. Maddow started off the ta

If Only These Lips Could Speak of Respect

Let’s face it. Even without knowing anything about “The Vagina Monologues,” the fact that it is about vaginas is enough to know that we are dealing with some heavy topics here. It seems like the concept of femininity, of womanhood, is incomplete without a conversation about sex. And when we say sex, we mean sex as power, as rape and abuse, as tangible proof that women are still being treated unfairly. Yet facing these truths is often too difficult, too depressing, and ultimately too awkward fo