The first article in this issue is by Arnold Birenbaum and concerns the crisis in health care reform. The remaining three essays constitute a single continuous essay on the relation of two forms of art, opera and myth, with special attention to how that works out in Gluck's Orfeo and Eurydice.
The purpose of this e-journal is to use in tandem the techniques of literary criticism and social structural analysis to illuminate American politics and the various institutions in American society and sometimes matters more global, like religion or war, by turning an eye on the events and objects and performances that are considered art and entertainment, those defined broadly enough to include whatever is covered in newspapers and other media. Another concern is to pick up the texture of social life, both in the United States and in general, through the analysis of those events, objects and performances that are to be found in everyday life. |