Highbrow Magazine staff

Meet the Staff at Highbrow Magazine: Q&A With Writer Kurt Thurber

by Kurt Thurber

Kurt Thurber came to Highbrow Magazine a struggling professional with a dream and stays to this day because of the rock star-like perks (booze, cash, the option to sleep in). He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Mary Washington College and a Master’s degree in International Relations from Villanova University. He currently uses all the knowledge he obtained from watching ‘80s action movies and seeing “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” in the theater to good use by writing for Highbrow Magazine’s entertainment section.

Meet the Staff at Highbrow Magazine: Q&A With Writer Christopher Karr

by Christopher Karr

Christopher Karr is originally from Barbourville, Kentucky. After graduating from Northern Kentucky University with a BFA in Theatre, he co-founded the experimental theatre group Artemis Exchange. Since moving to New York City in 2008, Karr has written a novel, poetry, essays, a slim adaptation of the Bible, and an unfilmable screenplay based on Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. His award-winning plays have been performed in Cincinnati and Chicago. He is currently listening to the Drive soundtrack. Beyond that, he has no plans.

Meet the Staff at Highbrow Magazine: Q&A With Writer Maggie Hennefeld

by Maggie Hennefeld

Maggie Hennefeld, a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine, hails from Brooklyn, N.Y., and currently lives in Providence, R.I., studying in a Modern Culture and Media Ph.D. Program at Brown University. She worked for four years during college as a writer and section editor of 34th Street, the weekly Arts and Entertainment magazine of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Maggie has published in academic journals including Screen and Media Fields and has articles forthcoming in Alphaville and Comedy Studies. She is currently working on her dissertation, titled “The Politics of Film Comedy: From Vaudeville to Terrorism.”

‘The Great Gatsby’ and the Loss of Hope and Innocence of an Era

by John McGovern

A film robs you of imagining the world of a novel as you want to, while a novel cannot as accurately capture the televisual world we now live in. Part of Gatsby’s appeal is its depiction of a time when the American dream was a promising ideal, when the U.S. was not, as Horace from Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask (2010) puts it, a “fat, demented pimp.” The Great Gatsby was written when the U.S. was on the upswing, and now that the nation is in decline, it makes sense that there will be nostalgia for the ‘good-old days’.

Abrams Tanks v. the U.S. Army: Pentagon Wins This Round

by Alexander Ostrovsky

Modern realignments have altered the military landscape along with prospects of future conflicts which have shifted away from the type of heavy land battles that tanks are required for. As political and military realities shift and the historical presence of tanks as main combat tools is scaled back, the battle over the tanks has found a new frontier in Congress, concerning political posturing and defense budget cuts.