Category: Academic
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The Woman with Lapis Lazuli in Her Teeth: Exploring the Female Scribes of Medieval Europe
Written by: Tristan Craig. A 2014 analysis of the remains of a woman, exhumed from the burial site adjacent to a former medieval monastery in Dalheim, Germany, found brilliant blue particles embedded in her dental calculus. Raman spectroscopic analysis revealed these pigments to be lapis lazuli: an immensely valuable commodity in the Middle Ages and…
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Magnificent Manipulation: How the Medici Politicised Public Art
Written by: Joshua Al-Najar. In Renaissance Florence, public spaces served as the physical manifestation of the government’s agenda. Often this took the form of art, as regimes sought to disseminate a set of ideals via public works. This communicative discourse could be wrought with problems, as the creation of artworks did not necessarily translate to…
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‘Tipu’s Tiger’ and the Importance of Visual Language
Written by: Laila Ghaffar. In the narrative of the British colonisation of India, it would be very easy to understand the Indians as passive and helpless in the face of rapid British expansion. After all, history is written by the winners. However, one look at ‘Tipu’s Tiger’ and an entirely different story is conveyed.
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The Significance of the Media in the Provocation and Resolution of the Conflict between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims (1992-1995): An Analysis
Written by: Kvitka Perehinets. The media has always had significant political influence in communist societies, such as Yugoslavia. It soon became clear that as Yugoslavia fell apart, the media of the individual republics served not as an informational platform for its peoples, but rather as a tool for boosting support ‘for the stances taken by…
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Shadow Wars: Cold War Foreign Policy in Africa
Written by: Jack Bennett. The international political, economic and military landscape was chilled by the ongoing tensions between the USA and USSR during the Cold War. These hostilities contributed to the flaring of ‘hot conflicts’ through ‘proxy wars’ across Africa following the process of decolonisation during the latter half of the twentieth century.
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‘Deutschland’ by Rammstein: A Look at Cultural Memory in Germany
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.
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Earthrise: ‘Discovery’ of a commodified home
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…
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Roman Slavery: The Unique Features and Longevity of a Slavery System in Antiquity
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…
Retrospect Journal 