The controversy surrounding trigger warnings has highlighted a mystifying confound in post-secondary education. Faculty, students and school bureaucracies are divided. While trigger warning proponents emphasise the value of protecting students with trauma histories from unscaffolded exposure to content related to sexuality, violence, race and…

The play within a play has long been understood as Hamlet's attempt to catch the conscience of the King. But is that all it is? Perhaps there's more to the "Murder of Gonzago" than either Hamlet or even Shakespeare, himself, intended? While the narrative of the Player King and Player Queen clearly works to tap into the private guilt of…

Trigger warnings are posing serious threats to the ways that English educators can teach at the university level. If Aristotle--and Hillis-Miller years later--argue that literature must arouse and bring about catharsis, then proponents of trigger warnings are anaesthetising the power of words and watering down their ability to incite emotional…