Category: Academic
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Maroon State: Slave community and resistance in Palmares, Brazil
Written by Jack Bennett. The emergence of Palmares, a quilombo – or community of self-liberated slaves – as a political and social reality in the Brazilian heartland between 1605 and 1695, posed a threat to the colonial order in the region through overt, subversive resistance. This alternative African state faced numerous military campaigns against it…
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Conflict, Chaos and the Florentine Inferno
Written by: Joshua Al-Najar. On a preliminary reading, Dante Alighieri’s Inferno seems entirely unconcerned with political realities. Its setting is a fantastical reimagining of hell, imbued with mythological creatures and terrifying landscapes: an illusory space for Dante to contend with sin’s dramatic consequences. However, behind this veneer is a deeply incisive reflection on reality, as…
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Dionysos the Weird: Reading Bacchae through the lens of Lovecraftian horror
Written by: Justin Biggi. Euripides’ Bacchae features some of the stranger imagery the playwright employed throughout his works. Focusing on Dionysos’ return to his homeland of Thebes, the play sees Dionysos’ cousin, Pentheus, meet a grisly end at the hands of, amongst others, his own mother, driven mad with other women by Dionysos himself. Pentheus’…
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Railways, Race, and Lions – The Tale of the Tsavo Man-Eaters
Written by: Lewis Twiby. The Uganda Railway appeared to be one of the best examples of imperial negligence by the British Empire. One of the big disasters to strike the railway was at the Tsavo River where two lions killed around thirty workers. The story of the man-eaters offers an insight into labour and colonialism…
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‘Out of the Barbershop and into the Future’: Modern Medicine of New York City in 1900
Written by: Jack Bennett. Providing a window through which the harsh reality of illness and incurability on the wards of The Knick is revealed, mirroring the trichotomous nature of corruption, consumption and capitalism in the tension ridden socio-political environment of New York City and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.
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A Letter To My Students
Written by: Dr Jake Blanc. In light of the UCU strikes and EUSA’s overwhelming vote in favour of supporting the UCU, we invite Dr Jake Blanc to write on why he and other lecturers are striking.
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The Ideological Barriers faced by Renaissance Women Humanists
Written by: Joshua Al-Najar. On a preliminary reading, humanism appears to be wrought with misogynistic tendencies, providing little space for women’s engagement. Joan Kelly-Gadol points to male humanists such as Juan Luis Vives, whose misogynistic writings were informed by Aristotelian biology and the hyper-masculine nature of classical humanism. Women’s apparent biological, religious and historical inferiority…
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Total Military Politics: The Rise of Japanese Fascism
Written by: Jack Bennett. Rising ultranationalism, militarism, and state capitalism under the early reign of the Showa Emperor Hirohito, defined Japanese politics and society as ‘statist’ from the 1920s through to the 1940s. The reverberations of global events and shifting economic and political dynamics during the 1920s and 1930s directly influenced the domestic character of…
Retrospect Journal 