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

Like what we do? Find out more.

ANZAC – today and tomorrow

This year, amidst the lock down and the chaos, many New Zealanders are planning the long, arduous trek to the letter box to stand and honour the traditions of a nation, a stationary dawn parade for ANZAC day. Even while relegated to the confines of our properties,...

Come back ‘with your shield or on it’: A case for Spartan Women

Women in ancient Greece were purely domestic beings. Cloistered and confined to the Oikos (home), each woman was trapped in her Odyssean hellscape …

The Power of the Camera

I've been grappling with one of the focus questions in last week's session. "These are our stories, our people’ (Mike King) Why is it important for Maori to be a part of film and media?"   One of the biggest problems with minorities is that their experiences are...

Knock, knock! Who’s there?

Sometimes before you can start a conversation with someone you have to knock before entering, and man is one of the most nerve-wracking things to do. Nicole’s words of reflexivity resonated with me, acknowledging that when you start your research you can either be...

Poets of Resistance

I know we began this course by saying we wouldn’t bring up war poets, and though I’d love to spare everyone the Dulce et decorum est, I feel like in order to understand the human aspect of conflict, we need to look to poetry. Poetry is a genre typically bound by...

The end, the means, and the manipulation.

While talking about international campaigns and how they work, Thomas Nash talked about there being three key things to consider; who we want to influence, how we want to influence and what we can use to influence. This short phrase really got my mental gears turning...

Nuclear Testing and Impacts on Indigenous People

Hi Team. This came across my FB feed. One more of the travesties of colonialism. https://www.facebook.com/ABCTV/videos/288687948821354/

“This is me, Eliza Thornberry, part of your average family.”

Weirdly enough my favourite show as a kid was ‘The Wild Thornberrys’ and I would be lying if I said it didn’t change my life. It aired from 1998 to 2004 on Nickelodeon and the movie came out in 2002.  If you haven’t had the wonderful experience of watching ‘The Wild...

Perception

As Halloween recently passed, my mind shifts to the commodification of culture. Nowadays you can purchase anything from toy guns to real guns, and murdering video games to watching WW2 in colour. (Greatest Events of WW2 in Color - Netflix). I feel less as if war is in...

What Can Art Do?

Conflict has existed for almost as long as mankind has. Sometimes it erupts into war, sometimes into simmering problems under the surface, other times like an earthquake, with effects resonating across all kinds of people and over hundreds of years. All along these...

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,...

read more
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...

read more
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...

read more