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A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime (2005)
by Ella Hollowood The premise of A. Roger Ekirch’s At Day’s Close is a relatively simple one: what was nighttime like in Western society before industrialisation and modern lighting? Yet the result is a rich and fascinating study of ‘the forgotten half of the human experience’ and of a fundamental shift that took place between…
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Agnes of Poitou (c.1025-1077) and ‘Medieval’ Attitudes to Women in Power?
by Emily Ward Popular interest in medieval queenship was sparked by the recent television dramatization of the novel, The White Queen, and its portrayal of the relationship between a queen mother and her young sons, the ‘princes in the tower’. This triggered thoughts for me about my own research period, the eleventh and twelfth centuries. …
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Historians and correspondence: The case of Jews’ letters to the Fascist Ministry of the Interior
by Florence Largillière First some historical context: in the 1930s, Italian Jews were considered as being well integrated into Italian society. They had supported the independence movements of the 19th century, they were heavily decorated during the First World War, and they participated in the political and social life of the country which had emancipated…
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Medieval Mappaemundi (World Maps)
by Julia Bourke Medieval world maps, or mappaemundi, are something worth sharing even today because of what they tell us about how medieval people viewed their world. While we have our own, modern techniques of map making, the mappaemundi provide us with a different vision of the world and its geography.
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History and United States prison policy: An interview with Dr Heather Ann Thompson (Part II)
by Jess Hope Last week we published the first of a two-part interview with Dr Heather Ann Thompson, whose research on the history of mass incarceration has frequently contributed to debates about prison policy in the United States. Addressing post-war urban crisis, the decline of the labour movement and the rightward shift in political power…
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