Category: Academic
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The Influence of the Roman Empire on the Catholic Church
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…
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The Nazi Party: A Seeming Modernisation
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.…
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An invisible historical landscape: Barcelona’s Civil War tours
Written by Josh Newmark Image: Albggt, Placa de Catalunya, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/574068283732608796/, 04/11/2018 In a country which is often described as suffering from ‘historical amnesia’ towards its Civil War and subsequent dictatorship, Civil War tours of Barcelona bring history to life where it is otherwise inapparent. For those intrigued by the Spanish Civil War, the lack of much museum space…
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Monsters, Masks & Military Mutilation: The Influence of the First World War on Early Horror Cinema
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…
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“How to tell the story of the slave trade without depicting bleeding dying Africans?”: A Question Posed by Lubaina Himid
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…
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Cuba: Revolution on an Island
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…
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Public Lecture Review: Janet Philp’s The Anatomy of Pirates
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:…
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Alfred Dreyfus and France: A Crisis of Identity
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…
Retrospect Journal 