Category: Academic
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War & Peace: Art in Ducal Milan
Written by Joshua Al-Najar. Art was a key tool for renaissance cities to disseminate ideas and fashion an identity in a pluralistic, competitive society. Scholarship has tended to focus on the programmes undertaken in republics, such as Florence and Venice – perhaps less considered is how dynastic systems were able to deploy the Renaissance’s lessons…
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New York and the LGBTQ+ Community over a Century
Written by Lewis Twiby. The anonymity of big cities allows persecuted sub-cultures and identities to find room to exist. London, Berlin, and Paris are just three examples of cities with flourishing LGBTQ+ communities. In the United States, New York was one of the major sites for gay liberation. Throughout the twentieth century a flourishing and…
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Mapping the Medieval World
Written by Tristan Craig. By the Middle Ages, cartographic practices showed increasing scope and refinement due to expansions in world trade, however there remained a large disparity between maps which attempted to depict an accurate world view and those which served a predominantly ecclesiastical purpose.
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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.
Retrospect Journal 