New Bodies, Old Norms: Transsexuals in Iran
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are clearly defined oppositional concepts. Yet the country is also the world’s second most prolific practitioner of sex-reassignment surgeries. In 1985 Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa stating that transsexuals should be permitted to ch
Review: The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2015
For the next month, the top floors of The Photographers’ Gallery will be filled with an innovative series of photographs – pinned or projected onto walls, printed in books and pamphlets, animated in videos, illuminated in lightboxes and framed behind glass. The images engage with life in Soviet
“Bleached Beauty”: Shadeism in Indian Cinema
The Western perception of Indian Cinema generally amounts to one genre and one region: Bollywood, the colourful, all singing, all dancing export from Mumbai. But the first full-length Indian film in 1913 was not a Bollywood, but a Marathi production, and regional Marathi cinema has continued alongsi
Video: No Platform for Marine Le Penn?
The ISIS talks about the ‘no platform’ strategy with activists, students and politicians at Marie Le Pen’s Union Speech
“We marched out down to the Ashmolean where we burnt the proctors in effigy”: Tariq Ali on Student Activism and his time at Oxford (1983)
We are sitting in his study in Hornsey, the seat he hopes to contest as a member of the Labour party in the next General Election. At the moment, the problem of his membership in the party has been ‘shelved’ by the NEC who regard him, basically, as too far to the Left. Hornsey Constituency Labo
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Deep Web
The deep web is often cited as making up 99% of the Internet. It is understood to be a murky, metamorphosing nebula of information in which websites for contract killers and drug lords swirl malignantly. Impossible to navigate without the precise address of your destination, untamed by national laws
John School: A New ‘Cure’ For The World’s Oldest Profession
Cynthia is talking to a room of men about her first husband. She married him for a kilo of crack cocaine, only to, only to discover he was a hit man. While they were married she was shot twice – the second time landing her in a coma for three months. It was then that […]
“If I write about destruction it’s because I’m terrified of it”: An Interview with Geoffrey Hill
Six decades ago, when he was an undergraduate at Keble, The ISIS published some of Sir Geoffrey Hill’s earliest works. Today, he is the author of over a dozen books of poems and literary criticism. On the evening following his penultimate lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry, Hill spoke to us