Self & Society ZC Blog
A 21st Century Problem – Maintaining ‘A Room of One’s Own’
Yasmyn Shaikh takes Virginia Woolf's room of one's own into the 21st century, where debt and precarity make creative space ever harder to keep.
/ Yasmyn Shaikh
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Arts Self & Society
On Survival: Lessons from a Festival Exploring Sexual Abuse
Tanaka Mhishi reports from Clear Lines, the UK's first festival exploring sexual violence and consent through theatre, art, comedy and discussion.
/ Tanaka Mhishi
Arts ZC Blog
Daniels Langeberg On Photography, Cycling & Exploration
Urban designer Daniels Langeberg on how photography and cycling through Shanghai's megalopolis help him read cities and make better creative work.
/ Daniels Langeberg
Self & Society
“NOT ALL MEN” Misogynist Buzzwords & their Implications
Sam unpacks 'not all men' and other misogynist buzzwords, showing how each derails feminist criticism while posing as harmless common sense.
/ Sam
Film
Women in a Wasteland – George Miller’s ‘Mad Max’
Anthony Laurence on the Mad Max franchise, whose gasoline-soaked masculinity gives way to Furiosa and the women of Fury Road's wasteland.
/ Anthony Laurence
Politics
Will You Be Arrested For Reading This?
Jeffrey Hernandez reads the 2015 Counter-Extremism Bill and Cameron's vow that obeying the law will no longer keep the state out of your life.
/ ZOD Culture
Politics Self & Society
The Female Gaze, Women Viewing Sexualised Women
Nineteen13 founder Emily Hoyle challenges the assumption that sexualised images of women exist for men, exploring the female gaze in media.
/ Emily Hoyle
Politics Self & Society
Would you shoot the president?
Would you shoot the president to stop a nuclear strike? Elijah Joshua Pryor dissects the dilemma and what such questions reveal about morality.
/ Elijah Joshüa Pryor
Self & Society
The systematic sexual abuse of young girls
The Independent Inquiry CSE into Rotherham revealed that approximately 1400 children were sexually exploited in the borough situated in the South of Yorkshire.
/ Emily Hoyle
Film Self & Society
Dear College Kids, Would You Listen to Samantha White?
Aryanna Prasad watches Dear White People as a biracial student and asks whether Justin Simien's satire can make America talk honestly about racism.
/ Aryanna Prasad
Politics Self & Society
The Female Gaze, Women Viewing Sexualised Women
Emily Hoyle asks why women look at sexualised women, from lingerie campaigns to magazine covers aimed at a female, not male, audience.
/ Emily Hoyle
Politics Self & Society
Genocide begins with the Silence of the World
Zekarias Kebraeb is a human being who can fly because he has wings in his soul. To us Zekarias Kebraeb is an immigrant. Just an immigrant.
/ Benjamin Eli Levine
Politics Self & Society
‘no Justice, no Peace’ in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy
Benjamin Eli Levine traces 'no justice, no peace' from Rodney King to Mike Brown through bell hooks' white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
/ Benjamin Eli Levine
Politics
The Very Direct Democracy
When UKIP backed referendums and recallable MPs, Dave Martin asked what direct democracy would really deliver for voters and the working class.
/ Dave Martin
Self & Society
The New Great Migration: From the Furnaces to the Basketball Court
Via Alfredo Vea's gods go begging, Jeremy Barras follows the new Great Migration from the furnaces to basketball courts sold as escape routes.
/ Jeremy Barras
Arts Politics
From the Depths of a Melting Pot into the Circles of a Neoliberal Inferno: Part I
Benjamin Eli Levine maps how neoliberal ideology and identity politics atomise us into cells of a panopticon while claiming to set us free.
/ Benjamin Eli Levine
Film
Vince Gilligan’s ‘Breaking Bad’ – is it the greatest television show of all time?
Anthony Laurence weighs Breaking Bad against television's best and asks whether Vince Gilligan's meth-lab tragedy is the greatest show ever made.
/ Anthony Laurence
Arts
Arts Featured
Tom Johnson & Jack Eden's Another Britain Project
What makes you British? Does being of an ethnic minority make you less British? How about your religious beliefs? How has Britain's national identity changed?
/ Orsod Malik
Politics
A Report Regarding the Recent Inscrutable Events in Syria
Jeremy Barras asks whether Western strikes over Assad's sarin attack would extinguish Syria's 'moral obscenity' or simply ignite a deadlier fire.
/ Jeremy Barras
ZC Blog
Lina Silverman’s Open Letter To America
Lina Silverman, raised across the Middle East by Foreign Service parents, writes an open letter to America about 9/11, identity and belonging.
/ Lina Silverman
Arts Featured
Vanessa Omoregie’s Camgirls Project
Vanessa Omoregie explains her CamGirl Project, which pairs Renaissance paintings with internet selfies to reframe how girls see themselves online.
/ ZOD Culture
Film
Cinema’s declining Middle Class: Why have studios stopped taking risks?
Matt Spencer-Skeen argues Hollywood now funds only tent-pole franchises and Oscar bait, abandoning the mid-budget films where risk once thrived.
/ Matt Spencer-Skeen
Film
The Contextualisation Of Fiction
Matt Spencer-Skeen asks why Hollywood villains built from the West's real fears have become as beloved as the heroes who defeat them.
/ Matt Spencer-Skeen
Politics
What does Zimmerman’s acquittal mean for America?
Benjamin Eli Levine asks what George Zimmerman's acquittal for killing Trayvon Martin reveals about race and justice in post-King-dream America.
/ Benjamin Eli Levine
Travel
A British Graduates Summer in Shanghai
A British graduate recounts an internship summer in Shanghai, where crowded metros, new customs and a paradoxical culture reshaped his view of work.
/ William Murphy
Self & Society
Normativity Part I: The Atheist Doctrine
Dave Martin examines how forum atheism mirrors the religions it rejects, assembling a doctrine and narrative of its own from anti-theist polemic.
/ Dave Martin
Film
Blink And You’ll Miss It – 6 Films You May Have Missed In 2013
Anthony Laurence revisits six films of 2013 that slipped past the box office and the Academy, from Park Chan-wook's Stoker onward, all worth your time.
/ Anthony Laurence
Politics Self & Society
Education and Power I: Machine Minds
Tom Moulton traces capitalism from feudal origins to a dominance so normalised that 9-to-5 work and excess consumption now pass for human nature.
/ Tom Moulton
Film
Celebritism and Cronenberg’s ‘Antiviral’
Following in the footsteps of your father is never a meningeal task, especially when your father is acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg.
/ Anthony Laurence
Self & Society
Why America Needs Black History Month
Every February, Black History Month returns to inspirit black innovators and remind white America that black lives matter.
/ Aryanna Prasad
Film
CGI – A Case of Less or More?
From Melies's 1902 moon voyage to CGI-saturated blockbusters, Anthony Laurence asks when cinema's special effects stopped being special.
/ Anthony Laurence
Self & Society ZC Blog
Doctoring What It Means To Be Desi
An overheard Starbucks conversation leads Aryanna Prasad through the careers, marriages and expectations that define what it means to be desi.
/ Aryanna Prasad
Film Self & Society
The Importance of Diversity in Cinema
Anthony Laurence on cinema's representation problem and why film must offer heroes and role models who are not, by default, white men.
/ Anthony Laurence
Travel
My Cuban Luxury: Privacy
In a bare Havana casa particular, Aryanna Prasad finds the one luxury America denies her: privacy in a country beyond US cultural imperialism.
/ Aryanna Prasad
Self & Society
All For None And None For All: The Depressive Effects of Western “Progress”
Aryanna Prasad links America's individualist creed to its silence around mental illness, where saying 'I need help' takes the greatest courage.
/ Aryanna Prasad
Politics Self & Society
Duggan’s Just Deserts Or Have We Deserted Justice?
Oliver Brooks dissects the inquest that ruled Mark Duggan's shooting lawful and asks what an unarmed man's death means for British justice.
/ Oliver Brooks
Politics Self & Society
“You may house their bodies but not their souls”
Taimour Fazlani reads Gibran against the tuition-fee system, arguing that debt and dogma are stripping the soul from British university learning.
/ Taimour Fazlani
Politics
Why Don’t Young People Vote?
The only sure thing about this year’s general election is uncertainty. But one thing seems set in stone – the majority of young people are not going to vote.
/ Alice Glynn
Self & Society
To see an ocean of dreams in a mere teardrop as Wichita falls
After losing a friend to suicide, Benjamin Eli Levine writes on empathy through Chen Si, who patrols Nanjing's bridge to talk strangers back from the edge.
/ Benjamin Eli Levine
Self & Society
Normativity Part III: Ethnocentrism & Normativity
In 2014 the issue of identity is still one of relevance in Britain. Newspapers paraphrase Enoch Powell on a seemingly weekly basis.
/ Dave Martin
Self & Society
Feminism – Challenging Basic Conceptions
Orsod Malik leaves a Brighton lecture on women's liberation startled by how many of his peers still resist the basic conceptions of feminism.
/ Orsod Malik
Music
Frankly, It’s Deeper Than The Ocean
Hassan Que dives into Frank Ocean's Channel Orange, an ice-cold corridor between hedonistic dreams and his own lukewarm middle-class world.
/ Hassan Que
Self & Society
Dear Fellow Humans #GE2015
Elsie Bryant's letter to fellow humans before the 2015 election: a plea to vote with empathy for social justice, equality and the environment.
/ Elsie Bryant
Self & Society
The Changing Cultural Paradigm
Ancoats, once Manchester’s industrial heartland, is now a test case for urban renewal where cultural planning, artist-led change, and gentrification collide.
/ Daisy Kidd
Featured Politics
Global Visionaries: Erick Matsanza – Spice Chungu
Orsod Malik speaks with Erick Matsanza and Spice Chungu, African visionaries whose work defies the West's bleak single story of the continent.
/ Orsod Malik
ZC Blog
Have Your Voice Heard
ZOD Culture opens the ZC Blog to emerging writers and visual artists, inviting generation Y creatives to showcase work and have their voices heard.
/ ZOD Culture
Featured Self & Society
Why ZOD Culture Matters, and Why There Is Hope
One of our students is the founder and editor of ZOD Culture; other students have written for it. I admire them for what they do.
/ Dr. Michael Neu
Politics
Has the US Supreme Court Just Induced A Pharmaceutical Game of Russian Roulette?
Karen Bartlett lost her skin and sight to a routine anti-inflammatory drug; Jeremy Barras asks how the US Supreme Court left patients unprotected.
/ Jeremy Barras
Politics
A Small Island Insight
In this region of Melanesia, Islands are small states that get pushed around and often manipulated by powerful corporations.
/ Mui
Film
Jeff Nichols’ MUD & Idea Recycling
Anthony Laurence admires Jeff Nichols' Mud, then traces its debt to Dickens' Great Expectations and asks when homage becomes idea recycling.
/ Anthony Laurence
Self & Society
Is The Excuse For Ignorance Inexorable?
After Lee Rigby's murder, Jeremy Barras confronts the reflex to damn Islam wholesale and asks whether the excuse for ignorance is inexorable.
/ Jeremy Barras
Arts ZC Blog
Jennifer McCord’s Passion For Live Music Photography
Nineteen-year-old photographer Jennifer McCord on immortalising moments, the rawness of black and white, and her passion for shooting live music.
/ Jennifer McCord
Self & Society
The False Idols Series Part I: Lest We Forget
Dave Martin questions the remembrance ritual of 'lest we forget', asking what exactly we remember, why, and whom the ceremony really serves.
/ Dave Martin
Featured
Sabriye Tenberken & Paul Kronenberg: Facilitative Humanitarianism
Orsod Malik interviews Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg, whose Braille Without Borders and kanthari turn idealism into working humanitarianism.
/ Orsod Malik
ZC Blog
Lina Silverman’s Open Letter To America
As a fourth grader raised across the Middle East, Lina Silverman could not comprehend 9/11; her open letter retraces what America means to her.
/ Lina Silverman
Self & Society
The Cost Of A Pretty Penny
An unasked-for glass of tea leads Aryanna Prasad to examine beauty as women's unofficial currency and the real cost of a pretty penny.
/ Aryanna Prasad
Politics Self & Society
Materialism that Undermines Capitalism
David Gould argues postmodern relativism disarms critique of capitalism, and that taking objects' value seriously is a materialism that resists.
/ David Gould
Self & Society ZC Blog
Time Regained in a Vacuum
Edward Learman writes through a sleepless night to trace the school memories, isolation and half-answers behind a decade of clinical depression.
/ Edward Learman
Self & Society
The ‘Melting Pot’ Myth
A classmate's question about the melting pot leads Aryanna Prasad through August Wilson's plays to the myth at the heart of American diversity.
/ Aryanna Prasad
Self & Society
Normativity Part II: Heteronormativity and the LGBTQIA community
Dave Martin examines heteronormativity and the UK's first same-sex marriages, asking which social norms still exclude the LGBTQIA community.
/ Dave Martin
Music
Music
Nothing Was The Same, He Says.
Orsod Malik reviews Drake's Nothing Was the Same from Los Angeles, the final stop on the modern artist's pilgrimage in search of inspiration.
/ Orsod Malik
Self & Society ZC Blog
Peace
ZOD Culture follows the word peace from Gandhi through the commodified counter-culture, asking what it still means beneath the branding.
/ ZOD Culture
Arts
Ornamental Islam
Riding through London toward Ibrahim El-Salahi's Tate exhibition, Hassan Que finds in Islamic art a free form of worship beyond tradition.
/ Hassan Que
Self & Society
Raunchy Role Models & The Women Who Look Up To Them
Emily Hoyle asks why young women idolise pop's hypersexualised stage acts and what raunch culture sold as girl power teaches its youngest fans.
/ Emily Hoyle
Film
Reviewing The Most Recent Spike Jonze Masterpiece
Hassan Que reviews Spike Jonze's Her, where Joaquin Phoenix's Theodore falls for an operating system in a luminous near-future Los Angeles.
/ Hassan Que
Film
The Decline of Richard Pryor: Uncensored
In 1986 Richard Pryor appeared on The Barbara Walters Specialas a different kind of character, his lissome features, slender, fractured and unseemly.
/ Hassan Que
Self & Society
Sexism in The Media & Its Violent Implications
After intervening to protect two girls from harassment, student Tugce was fatally attacked in Germany, framing this essay’s critique of sexism and violence.
/ Stop Bild Sexism
Politics Self & Society
Slut Shaming & the Censorship of Music Videos
Emily Hoyle takes on slut-shaming and the calls to censor music videos, asking why Miley Cyrus became the scapegoat for a sexualised culture.
/ Emily Hoyle
Politics
The Dissension Between Western Actions and Western Values
Mark Richards charts the widening gap between Western governments' professed values and their record of military intervention and security policy.
/ Mark Richards
Music
The Music Industry’s Altering Digital Landscape
Over the past decade the music industry has continuously adapted and evolved in order to survive the transition from analogue to digital.
/ Mark Richards
Film
The Tale of Dexter Morgan
Anthony Laurence looks back on Dexter at the end of its eight-season run, asking how television's blood-spattered antihero lost his way.
/ Anthony Laurence
Self & Society ZC Blog
TRUTH, BELIEF & THE FLOATING CHRYSANTHEMUM
The Involuntary Bystander separates truth from belief, tracing how personal certainty hardens past the point of sanity in faith, sport and science.
/ The Involuntary Bystander
Music
WHAT THE FUCK IS A JAY ELECTRONICA?
Jeremy Barras chases the mystery of Jay Electronica, hip hop's engineered enigma who built a legend from anonymity and a single mixtape.
/ Jeremy Barras
Politics Self & Society
Acknowledging Privilege
Oppression is a system in which one group maintains supremacy over another, simple enough. How exactly does one group maintain supremacy over another?
/ Orsod Malik
Politics
A Response To Tony Blair’s Recent Contemptible Claim
Jeremy Barras answers Tony Blair's claim that religious difference, not ideology, will fuel this century's battles, and finds it contemptible.
/ Jeremy Barras
Self & Society
“Every Pair of Jeans Has its Story”
Taimour Fazlani looks past the style blogs' devotion to ask what fashion costs, tracing every pair of jeans back to the hands that made it.
/ Taimour Fazlani
Self & Society
Pornography: Instructional? Fantastical? Or Neither?
Jeremy Barras tests adult actresses' claims of empowerment against the industry's realities, asking if porn is instructional, fantasy or neither.
/ Jeremy Barras