Category: Archive

  • The Hanging Baskets of a Medieval German Prague: English Travel Literature from 1815 to 1848

    The Hanging Baskets of a Medieval German Prague: English Travel Literature from 1815 to 1848

    By Jana Hunter @janakhunter At the heart of Europe lies Prague: a city centred around the River Moldau, embodying antiquity, mysticism and the sublime. Its imposing and grandiose scenes received little attention from travel writers up until the Napoleonic Wars. Through travel literature, Prague emerged as a fantastical city providing escapism, both physically and mentally,…

  • Call for Papers: Reconsidering Illness and Recovery in the Early Modern World

    Call for Papers: Reconsidering Illness and Recovery in the Early Modern World

    By Rachel Clamp (@racheljclamp) and Claire Turner (@_claire_turner_) With many conferences being cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19, Rachel Clamp (Durham University) and Claire Turner (University of Leeds) have decided to hold an online interdisciplinary conference. Their aim is to provide a space for scholars at all stages of their careers to discuss and share…

  • Cherry-picking the past: empire through a public lens

    Cherry-picking the past: empire through a public lens

    By Liam Grieve @LiamGrieve4 For all academia’s ‘independence’, historians remain tied to one immortal axiom: the past serves at the pleasure of the present. In this sense, history is underpinned by an informal social contract. Yet what happens when the terms of this contract are rewritten without the historian’s consent? Spike Lister recently did a…

  • Levelling, enclosure, and coronavirus

    Levelling, enclosure, and coronavirus

    By Max Ashby Holme The law doth punish man or woman That steals the goose from off the common, But lets the greater felon loose That steals the common from the goose. – Excerpt from “The Goose and the Commons” (c. 17th cent.) [1] As lockdown measures in the UK are eased, we must consider…

  • Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy: A Soviet-era Exposition and the Russian State

    Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy: A Soviet-era Exposition and the Russian State

    By Liya Wizevich (@liyawizevich) In Soviet Union there was vast human and geographical diversity, leading the government to look for ways to not benefit from it by showcasing the social, economic and geographical differences. This national diversity was grandiosely displayed nowhere better than in Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, (VDNKh).[1]