Cate Burtner

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Obsession is not desire: ‘My Husband’ progresses beyond tropes of mental illness

Jan 13, 2025 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

In her column “Brutal Monsters,” Cate Burtner ’25 offers commentary on the literature of mental illness. “She fangirls about her husband for 300 pages.” — The person who recommended this book to me.
Levin celebrates birthday at Presidential FLiCKS

Nov 20, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

The year 1993 was big. The cult classic “Dazed and Confused” hit theaters while University President Jonathan Levin ’94 was in his junior year at Stanford. The Internet, video streaming and even DVDs did not yet exist at that time, he pointed out in an introduction to Sunday’s FLiCKS screening. Sunday’s “Presidential FLiCKS” marked a stark contrast to that era of limited technology as students gathered in the modern CEMEX auditorium for a screening of “Dazed and Confused,” selected by Levin.
Hasan Minhaj is done with the cancel, but keeps riffing on the culture

Nov 19, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

Hasan Minhaj’s comedy has long been about displaying introspective content in fresh forms. From his work on “The Daily Show” to “Patriot Act,” he has aimed to inform audiences about current issues, not without doing some light damage to the reputations of various figures and corporations. In the past, he has been successful. But after a New Yorker article fact-checked his comedy and blemished a mostly spotless career, his jokes have shifted perspective.
'Sad girl poetry’ and the gendered political madness of 2024

Nov 13, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

In her column “Brutal Monsters,” Cate Burtner ’25 offers commentary on the literature of mental illness. I have always thought the term ‘sad girl poetry’ was condescending. ‘Sad’ feels overly simplistic. ‘Girl’ is infantilizing and sure, technically anything can be ‘poetry’ if you hit the return key enough times. I’m only human: the genre makes me think of Rupi Kaur and Gabbie Hanna for their Notes app-esque verse. I think of trendy aesthetics prioritized over emotional depth.
'Doomsday Manor'

Nov 4, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

Editor’s Note: This story is a piece of fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. We get to the venue at six in the morning and sit outside in lawn chairs for a chance to get into the house. Doomsday Manor, they call it. And this year, the name feels apt. Odds are, one of the six of us will get in. (This year, we are dressed as the characters from Shrek. I am Donkey).
Brutal Monsters: ‘A Little Life’ achieves very little, despite TikTok fame

Oct 29, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

In her column “Brutal Monsters,” Cate Burtner ’25 offers commentary on the literature of mental illness. Content warning: mentions of abuse and self-harm (SH). Hanya Yanagihara’s book “A Little Life” came out in 2015. In 2023, it took the internet by storm. In July 2023, a friend told me that everyone she’d heard said the book was “just really sad.” I had just finished reading the highly buzzed novel myself. When I told her about the actual events of the story, she was shocked.
‘English Teacher’ highlights the human beyond the classroom

Oct 24, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for season one of “English Teacher.”Evan Marquez wakes up for the day, and the ’80s beats begin. Sometimes the titular English teacher’s on-and-off boyfriend Matthew is next to him in bed; often, he’s not. Evan does his morning handstand push-ups against his bedroom wall, grabs his briefcase, rushes to the car and drives across an Austin bridge to Morrison-Hensley High School, frantically rushing to the classroom where he teaches English.
Back-to-school books: Reading that shaped us

Oct 23, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner |Kelly Wang |Sanaya Robinson-Shah |Anya Vedantambe

As students, we have all read a book for school at some point, but how often does an assigned book strike an important chord? The books listed here did exactly that for Daily writers at various points in their academic careers, anytime from kindergarten to college. Now that a new school year is underway, let’s celebrate the books that shaped us, even though we were required to read them.
The real monster of ‘Frankenstein’ is not who you think

Oct 15, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

In her column “Brutal Monsters,” Cate Burtner ’25 offers commentary on the literature of mental illness. To read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is to read a good number of stories told on top of each other. I’ve heard readings of the novel as a direct retelling of “Paradise Lost,” a cautionary tale for AI accountability, an essential part of the queer canon and, popularly, a result and encapsulation of Shelley’s tragic miscarriages and the deaths of multiple of her children during infancy.
Stanford d.school party rocks with student art and design futures

Oct 8, 2024 | stanforddaily.com | Cate Burtner

Stanford d.school hosted their first Satellite Session of the year — the first of several “parties with a purpose” — on Friday. The theme of the evening was sex, drugs and rock ’n roll — all three of which were woven into each section of programming.