[BEEHIIV FEATURE] Powerhouse Co-Founders of UniScoops Shaping the Future of Campus News 📰

University—the next chapter in your educational prowess. 

Full of excitement, challenges, and possibilities, transitioning from high school to academia can be a daunting and challenging experience for many students. 

The academic landscape is often characterized by specialized disciplines, rigorous methodologies, and dense terminologies that can seem unapproachable. 

Moreover, with the high volume of scholarly articles and research published daily, staying updated and finding reliable, pertinent information can be time-consuming. These complexities highlight the importance of platforms that can simplify and democratize access to academic knowledge. 

Step in, Holly and Gabriel, spearheading the charge with UniScoops!

💡 The full article talks about…

1. The Genesis and Mission of UniScoops: Learn about the inspiring story of Holly and Gabriel and their mission to make academia approachable and engaging for all, especially state school students.

2. Why beehiiv is the Chosen Platform: Discover the reasons behind their choice of beehiiv as their distribution platform, offering an easy, efficient, and student-friendly approach to sharing knowledge.

3. The Impact and Future of UniScoops: Get a sneak peek into how UniScoops is growing, impacting classrooms across the UK, and their future plans for democratizing academic knowledge.

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[ENGLISH] What is poetry, exactly? 🤷‍♂️

Have you ever read a Rupi Kaur poem of just a line or two and thought to yourself, ‘Well, THAT isn’t poetry!’? If you have, you’re certainly not alone. But this criticism of Rupi Kaur, and other contemporary poets, brings up an interesting question: how do we define poetry?

Stanley Fish grapples with this idea in his work on reader response theory. When teaching a literature class, Fish drew a box around a group of names that had been left on the board from a previous class and told his students that these words were a poem. They began to diligently unpick it, offering suggestions as to why the words were in a certain order and what the overall message of the poem might be. Fish used this and other experiments to develop his theory that texts, such as poems, are constructed by their readers: anything can be a poem if it is read as such.

💡 Things to consider

• The relationship between a text and its reader: Fish’s theories suggest that the very existence of a text depends on its readers. When does a text ‘become’ what it is: when it is written, or when it is read? If nobody were to read a text, would it exist at all?

• Author’s intentions: Fish’s theories also call into question authorial intent; even though the list of words on his board wasn’t intended to be a poem, it was read as one anyway. How much do author’s intentions matter when analysing a text, then? Can you ever accurately discern what an author was trying to do when you read a poem?

• Interpretive communities: Fish believed that different groups of people would read the same texts in different ways depending on their interpretive strategies, and he called these groups interpretive communities. What factors play into the way we interpret texts? Why might two people read the same text in a different way?

🔎 Find out more

• Stanley Fish, ‘How to Recognize a Poem When you See One’ in Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980)

• The One Woman Who Ruined Poetry (It's Not Gabbie Hanna) | Video Essay

[LANGUAGES] Albert Camus: La Peste ☠️

Albert Camus is one of the most famous 20th century French philosophers. Born in Algeria, he was a Pied-Noir and wrote stories set in North Africa. His branch of philosophy can be difficult to pinpoint – he considered himself an absurdist, although his close friendship with Sartre and others led to the label of existentialism. L’Etranger is his most famous work, but he also wrote La Peste which focuses on a plague in the Algerian city of Oran and how different humans respond in the face of adversity. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 for his works.

💡 Things to consider

• Absurdism: Camus was one of the frontrunners of French absurdism and this novel is a good show of his absurdist beliefs. Absurdism’s main idea is that the universe is irrational and meaningless. Each character deals with this realisation throughout the course of the pandemic, although Father Paneloux is perhaps the best example. He believes the plague was sent as a punishment from God. He witnesses an innocent child die from the plague and claims it is God sending a test of faith because otherwise he would have to stop believing in religion, because God would not make people suffer so much. Camus shows the absurdity of the universe is that there is no reason behind people dying. The characters are aware that their fight against the plague is potentially futile, but in the end, they still try to save people. Despite this absurdist ideology, the novel is often labelled as being existential, against Camus’ wishes.

• Allegory: for us, this novel serves as a reminder of the pandemic. The quarantine and the isolation are something we have all lived through. However, at the time of writing La Peste, Camus was not writing this story with a pandemic in mind – instead it is an allegory for Nazi occupied France. Martial law is imposed in Oran, thousands of people die. The group of people fighting the plague mirrors the resistance, and the plague itself are the Nazis and the occupation that comes with it. The Nazis were known as ‘la peste brune’ in France – this reflects the title of Camus’ book and the themes that come with plague. However, this shouldn’t be the only lens the book is read through, it should also be taken for face value!

• Individualism vs. Collectivism: the plague and its suffering affects everyone. Everyone is susceptible to the plague and people of all backgrounds die because of it. There are mass graves due to the shear number of people dying – even in death, there is no individuality. As the plot develops, people start to recognise their suffering isn’t unique and a sense of community builds in the city. Camus shows that even the doctors feel the same despair and emotions as the other residents. However, Cottard the criminal, profits off this suffering by smuggling and does not try to help others. Still, despite his individualism, he feels a sense of belonging with the people of Oran as they are also constantly living in a state of fear. How does our perspective, having lived through a pandemic, affect the way we judge the characters’ actions? Does this novel reflect our own reality during the pandemic?

🔎 Find out more

• School of Life: Albert Camus - The Plague (YouTube)

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👀 Keep your eyes peeled for…

• 13th November - Newnham College STEM Virtual Interview Preparation Workshop

• 13th November - University of Oxford History Skills Workshop (concepts and historiography)

• 14th November - Sidney Sussex Interviews Webinar (Session 1)

• 14th November - UEA Philosophy Skills and Insights Webinar

• 14th November - University of Greenwich Virtual Twilight Lecture: Introduction to Cancer Biology

• 14th November - QMUL Comparative Literature and Cultures Session

• 14th November - University of Oxford Webinar: An Introduction to History of Art: Historical Analysis

• 14th November - Newnham College Humanities Virtual Interview Preparation Workshop

• 15th November - UEA Engineering taster lecture (Iterative Design)

• 15th November- University of Oxford History Skills Workshop: Primary Sources 

• 15th November - Studying English at Cambridge Webinar

• 16th November - Sidney Sussex Interviews Webinar (Session 2)

• 16th November - University of Oxford History Skills Workshop: History Research Skills

• 16th November - UEA English Literature taster lecture (the Duchess of Malfi)

• 17th November - University of Oxford Think like a Lawyer Programme

• 19th November - Balliol College Fibonacci Programme