Profiting from Loss: India and the Right to Reproduce
“With all these vigilant vigils on virginity, you would think the country would have controlled its population by now.” ― Mallika Nawal, I’m a Woman & I’m on SALE. With roughly 1.27 billion people, India’s population is the second largest in the world. Projections for growth
Join The ISIS Team TT15!
Applications are now open to join The ISIS team for Trinity Term! Established at Oxford University in 1892, The ISIS is the UK’s longest-running student magazine. Our ranks have included Evelyn Waugh, Sylvia Plath, Boris Johnson, Graham Greene, Nigella Lawson, George Osborne and Hilaire Beloc. We
Living in the Third Reich: An interview with Ron Gray
Dr Ronald Gray is a Life Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He has been there since joining as an undergraduate in the 1930s, and spent 33 years as a lecturer on German literature, history and philosophy. This Christmas, I met with Ron to discuss one particular period of his life. In 1938, Ron s
‘Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being’ [David Foster Wallace]. Is it?
Fucking Being To fucking be or not to be fucking. When so much writing – from song lyrics to medieval poetry – is concerned with sex (the giver, the receiver, the lack, the lust), I wonder whether it is possible to write, not about ‘what it is to be a fucking human being’ but rather [&hellip
Belleville / Pavement Cracks
Belleville Satie stirs, while breeze seeps through a window left ajar in Belleville, our home. The scent of white wine, our blood. The salt lamp kindling. Your precious orchids growing jealous Pavement Cracks I shall cast these cracks in the pavement with molten gold, so that I may hold these second
Zoos
In Memoriam R. S. Thomas I tell Genevieve Cooper about the world every Tuesday at three. She lives at the top of a hill outside of town and everyone assumes that she has some nurse up there who helps her out, but that isn’t true. She’s lived there since her husband died when she was […]
Prophetic Fallacy: The “prosperity theology” of a “faith healer”
“You’ve got cancer of the stomach? Are you ready to burn that cancer out? Here it goes in the mighty… Devil back off – back off devil! Hallelujah!” – Peter Popoff, 1986 In 1986, Peter Popoff was exposed. The American faith healer and “televangelist” had enjoyed great
The ISIS Short Essay Competition: “O tell me the truth about love” (W.H. Auden).
A mathematician’s perspective The science of love: instead of The One, there’s a distribution of Ones, everyone in the world has a number that tells you how compatible/suitable/loveable they are to you. Above a certain threshold we call it love. There exist algorithms to optimise your chances of
Keeping the Memory Alive (and Profitable): The problem of dead artists
There has never been a better or a worse time to be a dead celebrity. In 2012 the annual revenue generated in the USA by dead celebrities was estimated by Forbes at $2.25bn. Their work will remain; their profits are ensured but their legacies are not. After an adulatory obituary and a flurry of resu