TBQ Week in Review

By Stefan Kielbasiewicz
Wally Gobetz / Flickr

Wally Gobetz / Flickr

Let’s start with some pretty photographs: the 27th Annual National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest has announced their winners for this year, whose photos you are available via The Atlantic. Notice the severe underrepresentation of selfies in this final list—it seems the dominant mode of recorded expression for travelers continues to be tragically silenced. On the subject of selfies, the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer has been generated through Twitter by female engineers to challenge stereotypes of how society and industries think engineers should look. The Washington Post has dedicated an article to chronicling how the movement came about and quotes the women involved on why it was so significant for them.

Under which field would you think #ILookLikeAnEngineer would fall under: Women’s Studies or…Men’s Studies? Stony Brook University will soon start the first master’s degree program in “masculinities studies” under Dr. Kimmel, founder for the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities. Essentially, it is an academic pursuit of what it means to be a male, a man, or a real man in today’s world. The New York Times has published an article detailing the genesis of Masculinities Studies with Dr. Kimmel and how students have reacted to it so far. Clearly though, from the perspective of author Catherine Nichols, what it means to be a man today still is that you are more likely to be published: The Guardian’s Alison Flood describes how under a male pseudonym—and with the same cover letter and pages—Nichols received seventeen requests out of fifty agents (both women and men), in contrast to only two replies under her real name, clearly indicating a deep gender bias within publishing to “women’s” and “men’s” writing, rather than simple sexism.

Within the wider issue of gender, femininity and masculinity, the queer academic Karen Tongson from The University of Southern California has written an article in Public Books that describes the phenomenon of “normporn” in contemporary American television, which elucidates how both “normal”  and queer personalities are forced to confront the fact of their own normalcy, despite the insistence on queer identity. Certainly though, it would feel somewhat queer to be a transgender inmate in San Quentin. Jessica Pishko in The Guardian writes about Lady Jae, who is just one of 300 transgender inmates in California prisons statewide, and how she negotiates her identity in the prison system and the legal framework that binds her there.

Jon Stewart has officially signed off as the anchor of The Daily Show after a reign of sixteen years, and you can watch his official goodbye here at The Guardian. You can also watch the “9 Essential Moments” on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart compiled with loving attention from the New York Times. You will not be forgotten, Jon Stewart. You wouldn’t be forgotten even if you had the right to be: it has been a year since the European Court of Justice granted Europeans the “right to be forgotten”, or delinked from search engines, which sparked a debate on freedom of expression and historical record. Francis Manjoo in the New York Times describes how recent developments may possibly now expand the European decision to the Internet companies in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

This week has been the 70th Anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by U.S. atomic weapons at the end of World War II. Bypassing the usual debate about “right” or “wrong,” The Atlantic has a great piece on what led to the decision by U.S. leaders to single out Hiroshima in the first place, instead of more likely options such as Tokyo or Kyoto. For a more international perspective on the bombs, read a compilation of students’ replies from schools around the world on why the bombings took place and how they were justified.

To end on a lighter note, if you follow sports journalism then this headline from the Columbia Journalism Review, In a rush to be first, Mets reporter tweets too soon may interest you, on the relationship between sports and journalism and how the latter may often fail the expectations of the former. And there we have it, folks: this Week in Review has now completed its run around the bases.

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Stefan Kielbasiewicz is an editorial intern for The Brooklyn Quarterly. He is the co-chair of YorkPEN, the student-run affiliate of English PEN/PEN International at York University.

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