Arts Scholars

Koi te hinengaro, koi te arero, koi te mahi!
Sharp of mind, tongue, and work!

Keep up with the latest discussions and thoughts from our Arts Scholars whānau

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Serve Them Chocolate Hobnob

Reflecting on Stephan Winter's research readdressing historic abuse in Aotearoa, one question stood out to me, (or maybe it was the very appealing image of the biscuit on the slide) What biscuit to serve? When research is built around such sensitive topic, it can be...

Why Won’t Youth ‘Pokemon Go’ To The Polls?

CNN. Clinton drops a Pokemon Go reference at rally. From YouTube. Video, 0.46. March 8, 2020....

The Dominant Methodology isn’t Always Best: How Talanoa Re-framed my Education

Dr Patrick Thomsen's lecture early this semester stood out to me, for a number of reasons. His open attitude, his area of study, and, most significantly, his research method. Dr Thomsen collected his data through Talanoa, a Pasifika term derived from the words "Tatala...

Who Am I? A short, self-indulgent meditation on my internal struggle.

The past weeks have been a bit rough for me. The lockdown has stifled my self-esteem quite severely, and it’s left me floating without motivation or imperative. I did, however, find the energy to attend the Arts Scholars forum on power and inequality in research. I...

Age is but a number

"[It] is not that 18-year olds are old enough to fight - it is because they are smart enough to vote." In Frost's lecture on the Youth Voting Rights Movement in America, this quote summarises Nixon's argument for lowering the voting age to 18-years old. As Frost...

Classics, classics, everywhere

Classical mythology has been consistently inspiring art and entertainment over the years for a nearly inconceivable amount of time. As a die hard classics student (and all around nerd), I am always excited to find new adaptations to these familiar stories and see just...

On fake news: the power of propaganda in protests

"This violence isn't random; it is purposive and has reasons and goals, even though it can be incredibly intense and extreme." This is a quote that Dr. Zizek gave about the French Revolution a few weeks ago, yet when trying to find a topic to draw on for this post, I...

A reflection on food, productivity and Positive Peace during quarantine…

Over the last few weeks, I have watched from my screen (and the sixth-floor window of my apartment building) as people have improvised and slowly adapted to our new reality, in a range of creative and exciting ways. Charles Allen’s lecture on Positive Peace made me...

Reflections on Dr. Stephen Winter’s analysis

What is perhaps most striking about Dr. Winter's paper "Redressing historic abuse in New Zealand: a comparative critique" is the way he draws together two similar worlds to show where one world falls short. Dr. Winter uses a comprehensive comparative institutional...

Timeless Beauty

I found Associate Professor Erin Griffey and Victoria Munn’s research investigating the origins of beauty cultures and visual cultures of beauty to be fascinating. By referring to the Renaissance, the ‘Great Works’ they relied on were digitalized manuscripts and...

Translation is Positional

Translation is a simple process, right? Take a word in one language, change it into the other language, repeat for the whole text. A tried and true method, except... obviously not, please don't translate things like that. Not even a closely related language, like...

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The World of Fantasy

The World of Fantasy

*content warning* mentions of sexual assault   After Brooke and Hela mentioned Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games during their (amazing!) presentations, it got me rethinking some of the books that I loved growing up, and the increasingly problematic aspects of...

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Like a Peacock

It's been a long year. The world has changed in so many ways in only a few months, yet things are still oddly the same. Time has blurred. Things that have happened only a week ago feel like old hat. Movements have progressed rapidly, and at the same time achieved...

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Tissues, please.

What does it mean to “weep in the archives”? For me, it means connecting emotionally with the history that is - or isn’t - documented. It means expressing empathy with a community or a person separated from you by a vast expanse of time. It means recognising that...

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Rogue One: A Non-Skywalker Story

Rogue One: A Non-Skywalker Story

The first time I watched Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, it was as a casual moviegoer along for the ride. I sat there just soaking in the action and cast chemistry and left little space for thinking about theme or cinematography. Four years and one video essay later,...

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Personal Histories

Personal experiences are a vital part of history. My memory project – interviewing my Grandmother about her memories of war – raised some interesting questions for me about different perspectives and memories of events. I have done a few research projects and...

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An infrastructure of feeling

An infrastructure of feeling

War and conflict are too impactful to be forgotten, even if they aren’t talked about and burrow down into the subconscious. In my memory project, I looked at this idea in relation to my family’s experience of World War Two and explored the consequences of silencing...

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