ZETEO

Child labor now and then

May 5, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

As the Zeteo Editorial Collective prepares for its new spring issue, I have been wondering about the ways in which our authors have written about and framed children and childhood. Some of then have done so marginally, as they delve into their own topics. But for others, the analysis of childhood as a particular time and place is at the very heart of the discussion. Such is the case of James L. Hughes in his piece “History, Method and Representation: Photo-Elicitation and […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: child labor, childhood, children, Lewis Hine, photo-elicitation

There are at least twenty things that are hard for human beings

May 4, 2014 by William Eaton

One of my (and perhaps many others’) favorite texts is the following translation by Chu Ch’an from The Sutra of 42 Sections: The Buddha said: “There are twenty things that are hard for human beings: “It is hard to practice charity when one is poor. “It is hard to study the Way when occupying a position of great authority. “It is hard to surrender life at the approach of inevitable death. “It is hard to get an opportunity of reading the […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Buddhism, bureaucracy, sutra

Why we are talking so much about sexual assault on college campuses

May 3, 2014 by William Eaton

My colleague recently brought up the idea of “The Unsaid” as an interesting writing topic; discussing things that are a part of contemporary human experience but that fly under the radar. For a long time, I felt that street harassment and sexual assault fell into this category. It became so quotidian that it was brushed off like a pesky tap on the shoulder. Now, it seems everyone is talking about it all the time. This trend can often cause a […]

Categories: Caterina Gironda, ZiR • Tags: sexual assault

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Changing Perspectives

May 2, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

After a week away from my weekly reading post I return to Oliver Sacks. In An Anthropologist on Mars, Sacks writes about an artist who in his later years becomes color blind, meaning he lost all ability to see colors and everything appeared to him a murky black and white. He suffered from achromatopsia. For an artist who relies on his sense of color to create this, of course, was devastating. It completely changed not only the way he perceived the […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR

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To Write in an Ugly Way

April 29, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

The poetry of Ariana Reines, of which I’ve written over the last two weeks, can sometimes feel eerily adolescent. Eery because her poetry is very adult in its intelligence, but pubescent in its affected interactions with the world. To me, it is the poetic version of the hit HBO series “Girls.” Drunk sex lives around the corner from Reines’s smart, prose-like poems. The following piece is a good example of this: Glass Formalism and grammar are ways to be thin. […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: literature, poetry, writing

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García Márquez’s brief manual for children

April 28, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

Last week I found myself, like many others, looking for quotes by Gabriel García Márquez to remember him after his death. Among the things I found is a brief text titled “Manual para ser niño” (an essay on children’s educational rights, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 9 October 1995). In it, the Colombian novelist seems to recognize children’s natural and healthy appetite for things they enjoy. Since I couldn’t find an English version of this essay, I will be sharing my very own home-made […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: childhood, children, Gabriel García Márquez

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“There is no rigorous definition of rigor”

April 27, 2014 by William Eaton

The quotation of this post’s title is from Morris Kline, one of the great writers about mathematics. Kline, who died in 1992 and taught at New York University from 1938 to 1975, published a number of books — e.g. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (from which the quote comes); Mathematics: A Cultural Approach, and Mathematics in Western Culture — that continue to be worth reading. Recently I returned to Kline’s Mathematics for the Nonmathematician with an idea that it would help me brush up my rude understanding of […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: intellectual history, mathematics, psychology, science, Western civilization

Breaking Gender Stereotypes, One Eagle Huntress at a Time

April 26, 2014 by William Eaton

Today I was going to highlight the most recent development in the saga of student’s trying to hold universities accountable for their handling of sexual assault cases, as 23 Students File Complaint Against Columbia for Mishandling Rape. But every now and then this topic becomes too sobering to continuously discuss. Instead, today, I present you with this little gem from the BBC Magazine section: A 13-Year-Old Eagle Huntress in Mongolia. Of course there are so many things that could be controversial about this […]

Categories: Caterina Gironda, ZiR • Tags: rape, sexual assault

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Falling in Love with a Donkey – Part I of II

April 24, 2014 by William Eaton

This is the first of two reviews. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes in 1879. The short (80 pp) Victorian travelogue was a best seller. It gave Stevenson financial freedom. He earned a reputation as a good writer, paving the way for his first major success, Treasure Island, followed by the novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped, both published in 1886. Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey – the Kindle edition is currently free […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: Robert Louis Stevenson, travel

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