Second-year undergraduate Chenrui Zhang (Balliol 2022, English Language and Literature) has launched a new student publication, a monthly collection of essays called Erasmus. Pledging paperlessness, the first edition of Erasmus is available online here.
‘I founded Erasmus in December 2023 as a monthly catalogue of essays that encourages readers and writers to think deeply about any written subject, from literature and philosophy to politics and economics,’ Chenrui explains.
‘News and magazines these days often deliver short bursts of extreme events, without giving us the time or space to truly think about what is really going on. Erasmus slows down the pace, giving writers the time to fully express themselves, and readers the time to think through what the writer is saying. At the heart of Erasmus is an uncompromising belief in the value of deep reading — and deeper thinking.
‘To give room for this deeper thinking, I removed its three biggest obstacles: the fear of rejection, the constraint of topics and the anxiety of deadlines. All our writers can write about whatever they want, whenever they wish — and I believe, once you read the debut edition, that the quality of their work absolutely reflects this. So, please join us in our journey to write and think more deeply in our monthly releases of Erasmus, which you can subscribe to by completing the online form here.’
In the debut edition, the essays range from the Marxism of smurfs to the rise and fall of trust-based news, and feature quite a few Balliolites, including Ben Callan, Ian Chakravarti, Angele Baum and Vik Haque.
- Read Erasmus Edition 1 here.
- Subscribe to Erasmus here.
- Read the latest edition on the Erasmus website