Category: Reviews
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Review: Our Time is Now: Race and Modernity in Postcolonial Guatemala, Julie Gibbings (2020)
Written by Jamie Gemmell. Dr Julie Gibbings’ 2020 work on postcolonial Guatemala offers an ambitiously broad examination of race and modernity, creating a multi-vocal historical narrative which is simultaneously complex and readable.
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Review: Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell (2020)
Written by Melissa Kane. Maggie O’Farrell’s is a magisterial text. The writing is sublime, bringing to life Elizabethan Stratford-upon-Avon. However, it is a difficult text and requires a degree of familiarity with its inspiration, Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
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Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Slavery: Contending with the Inhumane
Written by Justin Biggi. Video game developer Ubisoft has received praise for the historical accuracy of its popular ‘Assassin’s Creed’ series. However, as with many other forms of popular media, the issue of slave ownership – a well-documented aspect of the Ancient Greek world – is heavily diluted for its audience.
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Review: The Ripper
Written by Jenn Gosselin. The new Netflix series on the Yorkshire Ripper killings revisits the series of murders and attacks from the 1970s and 80s. Prompting protests at the time from women wanting to feel safe at night, has this release highlighted a lack of change in the years since?
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Review: Goodbye, My Havana, Anna Veltfort – A Saga of Memories, Idealism, and Undying Love
Written by Lingxiao “Linda” Gao. Anna Veltfort’s book, Goodbye, My Havana: The Lift of a Gringa in Revolutionary Cuba, is both extremely detailed and expressive. Through its use of primary sources, it works both as a piece history writing and history-making.
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Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”: In Defence of Excess
Written by Alden Hill. Critics did not respond well to Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”. Yet, is there more to be said for the excess of the movie?
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“Know No Shame”: Black Sails and Writing the Historical Fiction of Sexuality
Written by Jess Womack. The television series, Black Sails, approaches the question of “pre-modern” sexuality. Through a range of individual experiences, it offers a route to writing the historical fiction of sexuality.
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Review: Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World, Jessica Marie Johnson (2020)
Written by Jamie Gemmell. Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson’s 2020 book explores the lives of black women in colonial Louisiana. Beginning in West Africa and moving through colonial rule to the formation of the USA to produce a history of the Atlantic world.
Retrospect Journal 