Oz Woloshyn
Oz Woloshyn
Recent Stories
What’s better: Oxford’s depth or Yale’s breadth?
Oz Woloshyn, who is studying English at Magdalen College, Oxford, has spent the past year as a visiting student at Yale. Oz returns to Oxford next year, but he couldn’t resist offering some thoughts, with the help of some of the people he’s met along the way, on the differences between the two universities.
Backstage: Meet Sasha Grey, adult film actress, revolutionary
Sasha Grey, porn’s flavor of the month, was one of the keynote speakers during “Sex Week at Yale.” Grey’s star is currently in such ascendancy that her publicist rejected comparisons to the industry’s favorite daughter, Jenna Jameson, claiming that Sasha has already achieved more.
'A Scholar's Tale:' Europe to Yale
Geoffrey Hartman’s account of his life is titled “A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe.” Displaced, of course, by the Holocaust — an event which has cast a long shadow over Western discourse and a subject which, for its own sake, and for the place it holds in the collective imagination, is not lightly invoked. With this in mind, Hartman’s linking of his intellectual journey with his physical journey from Nazi Germany is startlingly brave. How dare he demote genocide to the level of scholarship? How could he treat art as seriously as he treats life?
Rise of the Right
The first two weeks of November are rich in remembrance. On November 5th, 1605 Guy Fawkes’ attempt to assassinate James I by destroying Parliament was discovered and thwarted; the Berlin Wall came down on November 9th, 1989; and at “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, WWI hostilities ceased on the Western Front.
Rise of the machines
As anyone who has seen the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading” (2008) will know, modified household appliances can be used as female sex aids. This should perhaps come as little surprise: from soiled underwear available for sale in Japanese vending machines to “zoophilia,” the human desire for sexual gratification has left no stone unturned. In this context, the inception of mechanized dildos should raise few eyebrows — women have a right to orgasm when they want, how they want and without the inconvenience of a sexual partner.