If you follow Circumspecte on Twitter and Facebook – and you really should if you aren’t – you’ve probably seen a couple of posts related to Brainpickings. There’s a wealth of (potentially life-changing) information and insights that are clearly and cleverly written – quite simply, we’re smitten! Here’s a…
In chapter three of A Room of One’s Own, 20th century self-educated literary critic Virginia Woolf makes a compelling humanist argument; one, which is not smudged with the many “isms”, seeking bias, that seem to have found residency on the web. Woolf analyzes gender inequality in Elizabethan English society by…
In the early 2000s, my father gave me this book: “How to think about weird things: Critical thinking for a new age”. Although I flipped through its pages, I never actually read it – it was either too dense for my teenage mind or I was simply interested in other things…
Editor’s Note: My brother Hanif recently started blogging. Biased big sis tendencies aside, he’s a great writer! He also has a great sense of humor which comes across in his posts – something I fail horribly at – like this one on riding the trotro (public mini-bus) in Accra. The…
I wrote this a few weeks ago at the Bankside of the Thames after my visit to London’s Tate Modern Museum. It was an overcast (regular?) day in the city and a bit cold, but I enjoyed the chill on my face. I made it a solo date – art…
It reads like fiction. Young girl turns 13 – the makings of a celebration. Yet what is being “celebrated” is not so much the envious title of “finally a teenager”, but rather, an unwilling marriage to a man who – in many cases – is at least twice her age.…
By JEMILA ABDULAI This morning, while doing my daily inspiration rounds, I felt an urge to dig back into my blogging past – the archives of this website – and read something from a younger me. I do that sometimes. It’s not just fascinating, but also inspiring to see…
I have wanted to write about intellectual property rights ever since I took an international trade seminar in my final year in college. It was a pretty eye-opening experience, but like just about everything on the international front, there were no clear cut solutions or resolutions, especially where Africa is…