Journal of Artistic Creation and Literary Research

Ambiguity, Woman and Otherness in Ari Aster's Midsommar

Lucía Moya Sánchez — 2025-12-30

If films are cultural texts, as such, they express values and fears of the time in which they are made. Midsommar, because of the ambiguity it sets out to convey and so commented on by critics and on social media, accounts for a series of anxieties present today: in essence, the ambiguous nature of good and evil, and how these manifest themselves in our society in a confusing way, stressed by new concepts that require deep reflection. Thus, this paper will argue that Midsommar speaks of good and evil, but also of the familiar and the foreign, the familiar and the strange, the individual and the communal. To be effective and provoke critical reflection, these dualities must be perceived by the audience. For this reason, I have included in this article a survey that was conducted to verify whether the film did indeed elicit the contradictory emotions that the director intended in the audience. I will therefore make some observations regarding the survey responses to reflect on the emotional journeys of Dani, the film’s protagonist, and the audience. Next, I will explore the reasons behind these emotional swings through feminist criticism and studies of otherness: it is through these emotions that viewers can notice the existence of an ambiguity between good and evil, between what is ours and what is foreign, between the individual and the communal. Finally, I will question whether ambiguity exists, and what type of ambiguity is specifically present in Midsommar.

Contrasting Transness: Kai Cheng Thom's Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars and Thomas Page McBee's Man Alive

Gadiel Góngora-Mejías — 2025-12-29

Since the 1990s, a growing corpus of trans memoirs has expanded the literary representation of trans lives. These memoirs normally explore trauma, transition, confrontation with their pasts, and personal healing. Within this context, this article examines the portrayal of transfemininity and transmasculinity through a comparative study of Kai Cheng Thom’s Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars and Thomas Page McBee’s Man Alive. Thom and McBee construct their trans identities through different narrative strategies: Thom emphasises transfeminine identities as bodies intersected by multiple axes of marginalisation, whilst McBee presents a more solitary trajectory that interrogates masculinity and its entanglement with violence. Firstly, I situate both memoirs in relation to the conventions of trans writing, tracing how each text simultaneously adopts and subverts to reconfigure different modes of representation. Secondly, I analyse the narrative tropes that permeate these texts, such as geographical displacement, (non)linearity, and temporality as central devices in the articulation of trans experience. I argue that both authors reconceptualise transness as an ongoing process rather than a fixed arrival, navigating tensions of pathologisation, community and shared history. In this sense, these memoirs operate as critical interventions within trans studies, reorienting dominant narratives and discourses surrounding trans embodiment and identity.

Girlhood During Wartime: Utilizing Testimonial Literature to Reframe Security and Vulnerability Through a Feminist Lens

Paulina Meyer Cal y Mayor — 2025-12-29

The field of Security Studies has begun to explore how women experience war differently from men, but there is still limited research on how girls experience war differently from women (Kearney 95). The English translations of the autobiographical and episodic writings of Anne Frank and Nellie Campobello document personal experiences of girlhood during war, revealing not only how conflict affects the lives and development of girls and the communities that surround them, but also how issues of war, security, and vulnerability have gendered dimensions. An analysis of the translated works of The Diary of Anne Frank and Cartucho by Nellie Campobello, using the frameworks of Literature and Girlhood Studies, Security Studies, and Feminist Theory, provides insight into how girls experience, interpret, and represent changes during war. Likewise, this research acknowledges the importance of considering the politics of place when discussing the testimonies of girls and the contexts from which they originate (Mitchell and Rentschler 3). Cartucho and The Diary of Anne Frank encourage us to think about security and vulnerability through a feminist lens. Both Nellie’s and Anne’s families/communities exemplify the necessary strategy, planning, negotiating, and care associated with “maternal thinking” (Cohn 54), allowing for the conceptualization of girls’ security outside of patriarchal conceptions of safety that only consider the public sphere once they are forced into the domestic sphere by war.

New Masculinities and Snake Ladies in Vernon Lee’s “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”

Elena Ramírez Sáenz — 2025-12-29

The tale “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” by Vernon Lee is a rich text in so far as how it utilizes the symbol of the snake and its significance within pagan culture and spirituality. Prior to the cementing of Christianity, the snake was not associated with evil, but rather the opposite; with the arrival of the faith, it was demonized as were women, so much so that they were fused into a hybrid. Lee’s tale turns employs this cultural significance and deconstructs it, drawing from other folktales that also employed the figures of snake-women, such as the Melusine myth. The paper argues that through the tale’s main characters, Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady Oriana, Lee deconstructs the patriarchy as a construct; as something that does not simply exist in the world, but as patterns and behaviours that are learned. In “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” Lee dismantles the system and proposes new behaviours and new gender roles for the members of society.

Revising Trauma in Octavia Butler’s Kindred: An Afrofuturist Reading

Nerea Martín-Zarzuelo — 2025-12-29

This paper aims to analyse how identity is formed in Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) while using Afrofuturist techniques to connect the twentieth and the nineteenth centuries. The analysis does not only focus on the contemporary period but also on the antebellum period, as the main character, Dana, must face and endure difficulties that will make her question who she is and where she belongs. The paper draws from Afrofuturist and sociological studies, as well as literary criticism and feminist theory. The study explores how the influence of experiencing slavery through forcibly time-travelling to the past shapes Dana’s identity and personality, making her betray what is morally correct in the twentieth century and adapt to opposed conventions to survive during the antebellum period. The identity analysis in Kindred will be conducted through the lens of Afrofuturism to assess its connection with the novel and the Afrofuturist technology present in the work.

Subversion of Myth and British Cultural Approximations to the Spanish Civil War in Sylvia Townsend Warner's After the Death of Don Juan

Laura Fonteboa Ballesteros — 2025-12-29

This paper aims to discern how Sylvia Townsend Warner in her novel After the Death of Don Juan (1938) subverts the transcendental qualities attributed to myth to present it, instead, connected to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This paper analyses the portrayal of the Don Juan myth, situates the novel in dialogue with the Grail legend and the waste land motif, examining how mythical characters and motifs reflect left-wing British authors’ understanding of the Spanish Civil War. Firstly, the introduction discusses the reception of the conflict in left-wing British authors, the understanding of myth in the twentieth century, the mythic method, and the relevant myths. The close reading analysis of the novel recurs, mainly, to myth criticism and historiography, and focuses on: Doña Ana’s character, presented as the equivalent of the Grail hero(ine), the depiction of the fictional estate of Tenorio Viejo as the waste land and, finally, the identification between Don Saturno, Don Juan and the Fisher King. This paper argues that the novel presents myth as something artificial that has lost validity in the context of the war; it discusses the understanding of the Spanish Civil War as a class war through the entwinement of agriculture and economics with myth and, finally, it transforms the mechanics of the myths of Don Juan and the waste land to reveal aspects of the Spanish Civil War as understood by left-wing British authors.

The Modernist and the Magical: A Poetic Dialogue with Tares Oburumu

Tolulope Oke — 2025-12-29

Between Babel, Devotion and Doubts: A Dialogue of Poetics with O-Jeremiah Agbaakin

Tolulope Oke — 2025-12-29

Review of Joon-ho, Bong, director. Mickey 17. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2025.

Manuel Sanz Brea — 2025-12-29

Saqueos de mapache

Jose Fabián Elizondo — 2025-12-29

La Vida Breve de las Mariposas

Pau Bascompte — 2025-12-29

Review of Alberro, Heather, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannong Firth, and Conrah Scott, eds. Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities. Routledge, 2025.

Joven Albert Castillo — 2025-12-29

Review of Clarke, Gill. Artist as Witness: The Impact of War. Sansom & Company, 2025.

Cristina Franco Rosillo — 2025-12-29

Review of Quilty, Emma. Witchy Power: Hexing the Patriarchy with Feminist Magic. Polity Press, 2025.

Andrea Abarquero-Alba — 2025-12-29

Review of Lindsay, Jenny. Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars. Polity Press, 2024.

Nadia López-Peláez Akalay — 2025-12-30