Written by: Lewis Twiby. In March 2019, German heavy metal band Rammstein released their new, and controversial, song ‘Deutschland’. The lyrics and music video to this song gives us an insight into memories of German history, the politics of national identity, and the controversies which accompany it. Continue reading ‘Deutschland’ by Rammstein: A Look at Cultural Memory in Germany

Written by: Stefan Bernhardt-Radu, 4th year History Student, Coventry University While the Earthrise photo captured by Apollo 8 in December 1968 is usually hailed as a moment when the Earth as home was ‘discovered’, thus mobilising the environmental movement, the argument here is that it ultimately represents the containment of the movement’s radicalism. Whilst Richard Deese and Yannick Mahrane et al. argue that the photo … Continue reading Earthrise: ‘Discovery’ of a commodified home

Written by: Lisa Doyle One of the outstanding features of societies in antiquity, a feature that tends to be forgotten as we relish in the literature and traditions left behind them, is the slavery system. Both Greece and Rome were slave-owning societies, but Roman slavery especially seemed to experience greater longevity and was executed to a greater effect. The way Rome may be distinguished from … Continue reading Roman Slavery: The Unique Features and Longevity of a Slavery System in Antiquity

Written by: Toby Gay After possibly the most damaging year for the Roman Catholic Church in recent times with the global sex abuse crisis spiralling out of the control in the Vatican, and with Pope Francis bemoaning the current ‘weary’ condition of the Church, 2019 may be the year when the very structure and purpose of the world’s oldest international institution is questioned and reformed. … Continue reading The Influence of the Roman Empire on the Catholic Church

Guest article written by: Stefan Bernhardt-Radu. 4th-year history student at Coventry University. Whilst it is usually believed that the Nazi Party was antithetical to modernity, or in a philosophical line assonant with it, it is strongly argued that the NSDAP seemed a force for modernisation to the people at the time due to specific conjectural settings. A complex extra-national and national context generated a distinct spin … Continue reading The Nazi Party: A Seeming Modernisation

Written by Scarlett Butler Image:  Unknown. Anna Coleman Ladd fitting soldier with restorative face mask. 1918. Photograph. Rare Historical Photos. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/anna-coleman-ladd-masks-1918/. Suzannah Biernhoff has argued that the facial mutilation caused during the Great War was widely written about but “almost never represented visually” with the exception of medical documentation. Here I will contend that the facial disfigurement of veterans had a significant influence … Continue reading Monsters, Masks & Military Mutilation: The Influence of the First World War on Early Horror Cinema

Written by Scarlett Butler Image: Lubaina Himid, Naming the Money (2004), https://www.historytoday.com/ella-s-mills/lubaina-himid-naming-un-named, accessed 21 October 2018. As Black History Month draws to a close, I am sure that many people are considering that phrase, ‘Black History Month’. Torn between the necessity of raising awareness of histories of the African-diaspora, and the discomfort that all we can do is one poultry and discrete month. I will … Continue reading “How to tell the story of the slave trade without depicting bleeding dying Africans?”: A Question Posed by Lubaina Himid

Written by Josh Newmark Image: Marius Jovaiša’s  aerial photograph of Morro Castle and Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, (Unseen Cuba / Marius Jovaisa), https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unseen-cuba-first-aerial-photographs-reveal-islands-spectacular-beauty-1501542, accessed 21 October 2018. Why revolutions happen, and why some succeed when others fail, have been topics of great interest to generations of historians. Cuba has been no exception, and has long been the subject of debates as to how an island … Continue reading Cuba: Revolution on an Island

Written by Carissa Chew Image: Sketch of Jacque Alexander Tardy’s skull, front view Coinciding with ‘International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day’, on 19 September 2018, Janet Philp delivered a compelling lecture that inquired into the University of Edinburgh Anatomical Museum’s collection of pirate skull casts. Philp set out to answer the two key questions on her audience’s mind: who were these so-called ‘pirates’ and how did casts of … Continue reading Public Lecture Review: Janet Philp’s The Anatomy of Pirates

Written by Luke Neill Image: Devil’s Island, Encyclopaedia Britannica,   https://www.britannica.com/place/Devils-Island/media/160247/5196, accessed: 21 October 2018. On the 14 April 1895, Alfred Dreyfus arrived on the Devil’s Island, a French penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. He had been sent there for life imprisonment as its sole prisoner. Bound in chains in a small stone hut for most of the day, his only solace was the infrequent … Continue reading Alfred Dreyfus and France: A Crisis of Identity

Written by Daniel Sharp   2 December 1805: a battle takes place that was to enshrine Napoleon Bonaparte’s reputation as a genius military tactician and which would forever change the map and future of Europe. This battle would end the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire and would spell the end of the Third Coalition mounted by the European powers against France. This battle was the Battle … Continue reading Austerlitz and an Empire’s End: Napoleon and the Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire