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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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...

War and Peace and All That Jazz!

Briefly, citing written academic articles in a post so entrenched in audiovisual mediums didn’t seem ‘hip’ as the Jazz cats would say, so I’ve also referred to various documentary clips of musicians performing and speaking about their music. Also I’d recommend reading...

Reparations for Slavery to End Systemic Racism is a Terrible Idea

There have been many proposed solutions to end systemic racism, reparations for slavery being one. Reparations are a terrible idea. Systemic racism is a problem that’s deeply embedded in the system, something that doesn’t go away with a check. Systemic racism is like...

Lost in between.

The research panel discussed the way power sits with those producing academic literature. The production of knowledge historically, and often still today, favours an established western system while side-lining or silencing ideas that are themselves deemed biased or...

The Evolution of Fairy Tales

  For centuries, the whimsy of fairy tales has been ingrained into childhoods. They are stories which have been told over and over with intentions to provide entertainment and hope. I still remember dressing up like a princess with friends for birthdays or waving...

Conflict in modern societies

I’m a scientist at heart, and something I find interesting is that we believe we’re ‘pacifists’ compared to other organisms. One of our focus questions this semester was that all animals except humans have conflict for resources - why are we determined to prove...

A Modern French Revolution

In our lecture on the French revolution, one of the questions was why should we care about the history of revolutionary violence? This really resonated with me, as a white woman from South Africa and as a watcher of the protests in America. There has been no...

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...

Musicals! What are they good for?

When most people think of musicals, their first reaction is either ‘Oh God no’ or something much more positive. Neither of which is ‘wow this is my favourite medium to take in historical facts’. So, why are there so many musicals based on our history - specifically on...

Life Experiences and Good Research

We’ve seen throughout the course so far that a research project can be on any topic, although it seems that a good research project is on that is in some way connected to life experiences. Patrick Thomsen had spoken in his lecture of the way his life experiences had...

DISCLAIMER: Inspired by False Events

I love documentaries. Simple, narrated story-lines which require minimal attention from the viewer. They provide a fantastic (and frankly much needed) escape from everyday life. It's so easy to chill in bed with a laptop and binge an entire series, being able to relax...

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Kodak’s Little White Lie

‘All visions and stories and narratives come from bias.’ - Marcus Winter What are we as a culture if not a collection of widely understood images and narratives? After Marcus Winter’s lecture on his artistic practise of telling stories with sand, I wanted to...

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Violence and Legitimacy

Violence and Legitimacy

It is September in the year of our Lord 2020, and the world is ending once again. In the midst of our second stay away from university, (US)America has refused to go down without more high-profile cases of police brutality, bringing the Black Lives Matter protests...

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A New Perspective on the War on Drugs

        A lot of people think the war on drugs is an example of structural racism. They’re not wrong. Crack and cocaine are, chemically, virtually the same substance. However, crack is, due to its low price, used predominantly by black communities. Possession, the...

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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...

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Classics, classics, everywhere

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...

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The Evolution of Fairy Tales

The Evolution of Fairy Tales

  For centuries, the whimsy of fairy tales has been ingrained into childhoods. They are stories which have been told over and over with intentions to provide entertainment and hope. I still remember dressing up like a princess with friends for birthdays or waving...

read more