By the Book: The Importance of Reading Library Classification Systems

Written by Dr. Bridget Moynihan

Edited by Temi Lasade-Anderson

On a university or college campus, the library is used by every department and school. The library encompasses inter- and transdisciplinary resources, functioning as a place where collections of knowledge are stored and made available to use. While the above is true, these facts create an image of the library as neutral territory — a place where meaning passively resides — rather than as a site of active meaning-making. To accept this image without critique, however, would be to overlook both the importance and the problems of libraries.

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A UTOPIAN CURRICULUM PART FOUR: VOGUING

PART FOUR: VOGUING

By Ibtisam Ahmed

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo

Illustration by Iara Silva

As I continue to write this Utopian Curriculum series, it feels important to address questions raised from previous essays. In online conversations and email exchanges around parts two (Black Panther) and three (Sultana’s Dream), a particular point raised was whether something can be truly utopian if it is only positive and ideal for a specific demographic. It is apt, then, to dedicate part four to the art form of voguing.

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Unlearning British Biphobic Bias with “The Bi-ble”

Gemma Avens

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Illustration by @worthdrawingwell

Unsurprisingly, most of the authors in The Bi-ble wrote of feeling silenced and isolated around their bisexuality, convinced that their struggles were unique to them. In fact, similar feelings are what led me to find the anthology — and tear through it at breakneck speed. The Bi-ble discusses the authors’ experiences of bisexuality in Britain: of marginalisation, exploring their sexuality, and reclaiming their identity — finding power and joy in the process. The collection is an extremely valuable academic resource and one of very few books about bisexuality in Britain — bisexuality, here, being romantic or sexual attraction to multiple genders.

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Zero Patience

Eleanor Affleck

Edited by Ketaki Zodgekar

Illustration by Kirsty Kennedy

I came across John Greyson’s 1993 film Zero Patience: A Musical About AIDS in the first semester of my Queer History masters. I wanted to learn new approaches to public history with the aim of making LGBTQIA+ history and queer politics more visible. The film explored problems I was coming up against in my own practice as a historian, especially questions I began to form about how (and if) my work in institutions could relate to my activism. I think it is important watching for anyone involved in the field of history and museum studies.

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Starting the conversation: an interview with ‘Practically Creating an Inclusive Curriculum’

Mark Gavartin and Roohi Bhatti

Edited by Karl Egerton

Art: ‘The Agnew Clinic’, Thomas Eakins

For many people, visiting their doctor with a problem feels like a routine task. Even when they are nervous or distressed, they place their trust in the clinician in front of them to provide advice, assistance and direction. Doctors, by virtue of their undergraduate and postgraduate training, and their long clinical experience, are expert pattern spotters, and this is one of the key things that makes them efficient and useful. What happens, then, if you’re a patient who doesn’t fit the pattern that those doctors were taught at medical school, learned for their professional exams, or saw regularly in their clinical practice?

‘Practically Creating an Inclusive Curriculum’ is a grant-funded project at UCL Medical School (UCLMS) looking at opportunities to liberate and decolonise the medical undergraduate curriculum, which still remains a new concept among medical educators.¹ To find out more about the ins and outs of this project, we spoke to the two clinical academics at UCLMS who are leading this pioneering drive. They recently published a short blog piece on their motivations and progress in the British Medical Journal.²

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Becoming Unbecoming by Una

Martha Blow

Edited by Abigail Eardley

Art by Livi Prendergast https://liviprendergast.wordpress.com/

On the 5th October 2017, The Times published a story presenting decades of allegations of sexual harassment against film mogul Harvey Weinstein. What followed was the uncovering of an endemic culture of sexual harassment within Hollywood, followed by the seismic #MeToo hashtag. The Weinstein Scandal forced the conversation about sexual violence into global discourse and brought to light its ubiquity. While Becoming Unbecoming was published in 2015, prior to the Weinstein Scandal, it nonetheless addresses the rape culture that normalised Weinstein’s—amongst others—actions. That the graphic novel is set in the 1970s does not diminish its relevance to contemporary society, as evidenced by Weinstein’s exposure, and for that reason it is crucially important to academic curricula.

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INTERVIEW with LUCAS LAROCHELLE, founder of QUEERING THE MAP

Interview by Toby Sharpe

Editing by Abigail Eardley and Toby Sharpe

Could you start by explaining what Queering the Map does – and why you think it’s important?

Queering the Map is a community-generated mapping project, which geo-locates queer memories, histories, and experiences in relation to physical space using an online platform. Part of the idea is to open up the question of what constitutes queer space, or even more basically, what constitutes queerness. So, it’s a very open call in terms of submissions: whatever counts for the person submitting counts to the project and the process of queering space.

In the context of queer theory, there’s value in trying to unsettle what queer identity means. Queering the Map offers the opportunity for people to define what queerness means for them on their own terms, adding nuance to this term which can be endlessly changed and expanded – moving beyond a singular understanding of queerness, towards a collective understanding.

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Continuing The Unfinished Conversation: Stuart Hall through the lens of John Akomfrah

The archive has been the space of intervention from the beginning. One of the few spaces, reservoirs of memory, for diasporic subjects is the archive.

John Akomfrah (2014)

Benjamin E.I. Lubbock

Edited by Maria Elena Carpintero Torres-Quevedo and Rianna Walcott

Art by Maïa Walcott https://maiawalcott98.wixsite.com/mysite

Memory and the moving image are John Akomfrah’s materials. In The Unfinished Conversation, a three-screen video installation, his subject matter is the formation of identity, which, for individuals struggling to define themselves in their social contexts, is a matter of urgency. It is not easy to explain how identities are created, and there are few who have considered the matter in greater depth than Stuart Hall, around whom the film revolves. Born in Jamaica before immigrating to Oxford, Hall became editor-in-chief of the New Left Review and a founding figure of the New Left movement. He was an activist, regularly televised for his analyses of media reports, and co-authored seminal texts such as The Popular Arts (1964), which advanced the claim that film, media and pop culture should be taken seriously as objects of study. But what he was arguably most renowned for were his theories of identity: “Identity is formed at the intersection between the political and the personal” (Hall, 2013).

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Launch Night Excerpts

Art by Priyanka Meenakshi https://www.priyankameenakshi.com/

We celebrated Project Myopia with a beautiful launch event towards the end of semester 2. It was a night of music and poetry, as well as an opportunity for some of our contributors to elaborate on their essays and ideas. Our performers touched on a wide range of serious issues: from the exclusion of racial minorities’ contribution to the canon of literature, to the oppressive nature of zero-hour contracts that prevent tutors from being able to fully engage in helping all students get ahead, let alone those from a minority background who need assistance most. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who performed and shared their experiences, and we also have to thank everyone who attended and helped us drink the wine we provided! Project Myopia aims to bring marginalized people together and amplify their voices, and our launch felt like a perfect culmination of our semester’s work: people came together and shared their experiences of an academic world we need to change.

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“The Danger of a Single Story”: A Speech By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for TED Talks

Maggie Hunt

Editing by Maria Elena Torres-Quevedo

Art: ‘Aunty’ by Olivia Twist

http://www.yesoliviatwist.com/

In “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns against the misunderstanding of others, noting how generations of misrepresentation and stereotypes have dominated mainstream Western society. A consciousness of this issue is crucial to contextualising literature, media and their transmission in academia and in life. This TED Talk is a lesson in challenging these ‘single stories,’ and Adichie’s experiences of and insight into the subject illustrate the problems single stories create.

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