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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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