Category: Academic
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The 1997 Hong Kong handover
By RETROSPECT JOURNAL Written by Emma Marriott In the summer of 1997, a ceremony was held in Hong Kong, marking the official transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China, ending 157 years of British rule. Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last colonial governor, departed from the Government House in Hong Kong on the 1st…
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Thomas Jackson: The Stonewall of Confederate Honour
Written by Kevin Kempton. On 21 July 1861, Union Brigadier General Irvin McDowell fought against Confederate Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard at First Bull Run (or First Manassas). As the Confederate lines began to crumble under McDowell’s heavy Union assault, a brigade arrived, providing significant reinforcements on Henry House Hill. Confederate Brigadier General Barnard Elliott…
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Pan-Africanism and Western Domination
Written by Pablo Perez Ruiz. “Toussaint’s failure was the failure of enlightenment, not of darkness.” – C.L.R James, Black Jacobins. “This is where the African intellectual lives in paradoxical terms: powerful yet powerless.” – Toyin Falola, Nationalism and African Intellectuals. Pan-Africanism, when taken as a broad ‘group of movements’ with ‘no single nucleus’ and stemming from the experiences of the…
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Wicked Women: The Stepmother as a Figure of Evil in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Written by Anahit Behrooz. The recent scholarly resurgence of fairy tales and folklore, and the litany of rewrites, spin offs and adaptations, prompts a reexamination of many of the genre’s characteristics and tropes. The character of the wicked stepmother has gained notoriety as one of the most evil villains to be found in fairy tales, frequently…
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Pharaoh Akhenaten’s Ordained Benevolence
Written by Jenisha Sabaratnam. As Pharaoh of Lower and Upper Egypt, King Akhenaten undoubtedly had immense power over his land and subjects throughout his seventeen year rule of the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Though it was common for Pharaohs to justify their rule through religion, Akhenaten took it one step further. He changed the…
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The Legend of Classical Greek Theatre
Writtten by Phoebe McKechnie. When reading Euripides’ The Bacchae and Medea, a comparison with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible does not instantly come to mind. Their settings are very different: The Bacchae and Medea are set in ancient Greece, and the Massachusetts town Salem is well known as the setting of Miller’s Puritanical play. However, within these geographical settings, all three plays revolve around male-dominated environments where…
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Between Psychotherapy and Spirituality: Buddhist Interaction with Freudian Psychoanalysis
Written by Christopher Harding. In the West, Sigmund Freud is thought of as one of the greatest critics of religion that has ever lived. In our own times, we are quite familiar with attempts to integrate psychoanalysis and psychotherapy more broadly with religious traditions including Christianity and Buddhism. The rise of a ‘mindfulness’ culture, which…
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Presidential Campaign 2016: Thoughts from Across the Pond…
Some thoughts on the current Presidential Campaign from Professor George H. Gilliam, UVA. The great philosopher Woody Allen once remarked that 80 per cent of life is just showing up. Most Americans have stopped showing up at political events. This year, only about 9 per cent (fewer than one in ten!) of the population actually…
Retrospect Journal 