Sweden-based travel photographer Lola Akinmade Åkerström reflects on the invisible barriers that stand between her (and every traveler’s) camera and the strangers that become the subjects of many of her most powerful photos.

Cultural historian Benjamin Wild writes on a newly discovered portrait of Tudor monarch Elizabeth I — one that, unlike previously known depictions, doesn’t show her as a perfectly poised queen.

Medievalist Lucy Allen writes on the recent move among women in academia to add the title “Dr” to their Twitter name, which she views as “an act of faith, a promise to myself to keep my work from being erased.”

“…I think about all the photos of fat ladies with bodies like mine that have been used as objects of ridicule on funny cards and websites, because they dared do something as transgressive as wear a bathing suit at the beach, as though they were human or something.”

The creator of The Wire and Treme remembers his years of friendship and collaboration with the late Anthony Bourdain.

“Why do ratings in general, and Greatschool.org’s ratings in particular, perpetuate segregation and resource hoarding?” Ali McKay at Integrated Schools take a closer look at the school ratings website, GreatSchools.

“I do not live alone, I live with myself.” At Photo Sociology, photography student Richard submits his coursework, writes, and shares photo essays. Here, he shares a very personal narrative about his mental health — and how photography is essential to his life.

Lisa Lim creates a comic about her favorite matriarch in life, her grandma. It’s about a long Chinese tradition of loving boys over girls just because they’re boys. “It’s about a woman who scares the sh*t out of me, and the world, but who inspires me every day to be just as bad ass.”

At Longreads, Paris-based pastry chef Frances Leech reflects on taste, memory, and literature’s most famous confection: the humble madeleine, immortalized in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

“Mountain Buddha” at The Buddha Blog profiles Pierre and Jon, two hikers from the city who have fallen in love with the mountains. The current adventure takes them through an isolated stretch of New England’s back country.