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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The Standard of Truth

To understand conflicts is to reach into a tumult of voices and take out something sensical. History has tended to focus on the loudest – those who could afford, or were interesting enough, to have their voices written and preserved. Until recently, the voice of the...

Art’s Appeal to Humanity

Humans, as a species, are a peculiar one at that. A species overly aware of their own mortality and place in the universe, consequently bent upon obsessive overthinking, and because of this we’ve found ways to fabricate our own reality in a harsh world. We’re...

Is Conflict Necessary for Facilitating Social Change?

An unnerving idea proposed in Sinisa Malesevic’s The Sociology of War and Violence I keep returning to is that war is necessary in order to facilitate rapid progress. Although I largely brushed it aside as the product of bellicose sociology and the process of...

Criminality and Understanding

On our museum trip, the exhibition that had the most impact on me was also the smallest: that between the Pou Kanohi gallery and the Spitfire, focusing on the lives of three men involved in airstrikes on German cities. These men killed civilians, and destroyed the...

Memory, emotion, perception… and everything in between

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” ― Virginia Woolf It was while watching Christopher Nolan’s 2001 film...

Challenging the “Facts”

On Friday evening while watching One News, my attention was drawn to a graph reporting an increase in the New Zealanders receiving a job seeker benefit due to the COVID 19 pandemic. To an unsuspecting eye, there seemed to be a major increase as the once flat line shot...

War, Memory and Forgetting

Hi team! This popped up over the weekend on the history department FB page and I think it raises some interesting and important questions about war, memory and commemoration. And what we choose to focus on. Particularly relevant if you saw some of the clicheed news...

Seasons change but people don’t, honey; suggestions on changing the unchanging human race

It’s not a secret political, racial, cultural conflict has been occurring for centuries. In the foray of my first 5 weeks of academia, I have never been more keenly aware of the recurring patterns of humanity. Xenophobia is at large in moments of historical importance...

Spheres of Influence

I should feel bad, but I don’t. Or maybe it’s the other way around?

State’s Rights and Statues — Bad Perceptions of History

Dr. Zizek's lecture on the history of revolutionary violence made me question some of the ways in which historical conflict is percieved. The killing of George Floyd, and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests have presented some interesting perceptions of history. I...

Gender and War

When we talk about war, so often it is in terms of the male soldier or male head-of-state. When women are mentioned, it is often in the lumped phrase ‘women and children’. As we’ve progressed through this term, it has left me wondering: where are the women?  Simply,...

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Hated in our Nations

Hated in our Nations

Spoilers  for episode 6 of season 3 of Black Mirror below.  Civilian casualties are as common as they are condemned. Numbers remind us that governments, be it democratic or authoritarian, kill large numbers of civilians as a military strategy. In his lecture, Thomas...

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Labels and Positionality

Labels and Positionality

Of all the sessions we had this year, one of the most impactful for me was Dr. Madhavi Manchi's session on research positionality. She answered a lot of the questions that I didn't know had been at the back of my mind since I started my Arts degree, the core of these...

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