Written by Tessa Rodrigues. How We Disappeared is a profound tale told by Jing-Jing Lee which gives a voice to a forgotten generation of Singapore after the Second World War. Continue reading Review: How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee
Written by Mhairi Ferrier. The Five, by social historian Hallie Rubenhold, tells the untold stories of Jack the Ripper’s victims – the Canonical Five. Painstakingly researched, The Five provides the reader with a view into nineteenth-century society’s attitudes and norms. Continue reading Review: ‘The Five’
Written by Justin Biggi. Released in 2018, the BBC-Netflix adaptation of Homer’s Iliad was met with mixed reviews, both from Classicists and internet trolls alike. Continue reading Netflix’s ‘Troy: Fall of a City’
Written by Anna Nicol. On Tuesday 3 March, Dr Emile Chabal, the Director of the Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History, organised a Teach-out led by Dr Julie Gibbings (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Nathaniel Morris (University College London). Focusing on Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua, Dr Gibbings and Dr Morris aimed to provide a short overview of indigenous participation in these revolutions over the twentieth century, highlighting various similarities and differences across borders and dissecting indigenous identity and affiliation within each. Continue reading Teach-Out Review: Indigenous Politics and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America
Written by Lewis Twiby. As part of the teach-outs currently happening in solidarity with the UCU Strike, the History Society and the African and Caribbean Society hosted a very informative talk on Edinburgh’s connection to the slave trade. Continue reading Teach-Out Review: How Slavery Changed a City: Edinburgh’s Slave History
Written by: Kvitka Perehinets. Written by a second-generation Palestinian refugee, The Pianist from Syria offers a detailed account of the life of a musician growing up in an unofficial refugee camp in Yarmouk before and after the outbreak of the Syrian war. Continue reading The Pianist from Syria by Aeham Ahmad
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. Continue reading ‘Out of the Barbershop and into the Future’: Modern Medicine of New York City in 1900
Written by: Lewis Twiby. One of the many communities to call New York home is the Dominican community which Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof looks at in his 2008 book A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950. Hoffnung-Garskof offers an interesting insight into how diasporas and culture are formed. He is also keen to stress that diasporas do not exist in a vacuum – they interact with both the ‘homeland’ and other diasporas. Continue reading Review: A Tale of Two Cities by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof
Written by: Kvitka Perehinets. This is a review of the TV show ‘Chernobyl’ – contains spoilers! Continue reading ‘Chernobyl’ on HBO
Written by: Josh Newmark With mass demonstrations, a dramatic challenge to the Presidency, and the possibility of foreign intervention in the air, recent events in Venezuela have focused attention around the embattled strongman regime of Nicolas Maduro. This reinforces the tendency towards a ‘Great Man’ conception of Venezuela which has framed most common understandings of recent history around Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, and the regime he … Continue reading George Ciccariello-Maher on Revolutionary Venezuela
Written by Luke Neill Rohinton Mistry’s 1995 novel A Fine Balance is set in 1970s India and follows four characters who come to interact with each other over a period of around 15 years. There is Dina, the struggling landlady whose husband was run over and killed whilst cycling to buy ice cream for a family gathering; Ishvar and Omprakash, tailors whose families had been … Continue reading Review: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Written by: Carissa Chew On Wednesday 30 January, the Global and Transnational History Research Group welcomed Professor Rebecca Earle from the University of Warwick to present her research on ‘Potatoes and the Pursuit of Happiness’. In this seminar, Earle explored the potato as a foodstuff that came to be imbued with a distinct political significance in eighteenth-century Enlightenment Europe, challenging the typical historiographical assumption that imbuing … Continue reading Research Seminar Review: “Potatoes and the Pursuit of Happiness”
