Zeteo has always attempted to capture the loving, passionate interests of its writers, opening a space for those who seek to question, reveal, connect, and, above all, explore. This time, however, the engagement seems more visceral—and more collaborative. This fall, our writers see meaning as something jointly constructed rather than found or asserted by a single individual. They are proposing that true understanding must be achieved through conversation, disagreement, mutual elaboration.

How does this work out in practice, in prose?

• In writing about ethical issues surrounding Rebecca Skloot and Deborah Lacks’ collaboration, Sue-Ellen Christian and Ann Miles themselves engage in a back-and-forth conversation;
• William Eaton imagines a new science, one of perhaps many in which the distance separating perceiver and perceived disappears;Mitch Kellaway writes about a popular TV series’ potential to be endlessly re-defined by its audience;
  James Hughes tells a story of generations of Northerners and Southerners collaborating (in a certain sense) to confront the exploitation of Southern child mill workers;
• Katie Eller writes about J.K. Rowling learning from C.S. Lewis about a chest-mind-body connection that may be involved in moral behavior;
• And Adrian Wittenberg explores collaboration within the self—writing how a post-illness self reconstructs the pre-illness one.

Of course publishing a journal is also a collaborative process, and this sharing process includes you, our readers. Allow me to thank you in advance for your interest and comments (and perhaps for your own articles and essays, still to come?). I would also like to thank Zeteo’s contributors, editors and advisers. This season you have filled this Zeteo space with high ideals, with queerness, love, reflection, and revival.

Happy reading,

Alexia Raynal, Managing Editor

 

Credit

The photograph is by Lewis Hine, from his Empire State series (1930-1931). The original is in the collection of the George Eastman House Still Photograph Archive to which it was a gift Photo League of New York. To see more visit Lewis Hine – Empire State Building.