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 Power of Peaceful Protests

When Joe gave his lecture a few weeks it brought up some interesting ideas, but I didn’t imagine just how relevant it would become a few weeks later. With the help of the internet and other technology, protests against systemic racism have spread across the US and the...

Change

Various revolutions across the past 200 years have caused changes in social structure, political control, and the movement of our everyday lives. Today I tried to write about the french revolution. It is intriguing to look back upon the past and in their perspective...

Age through sex: considering masculinity, maturity, and music

Jennifer Frost’s response to the predictably brilliant question posed by Antonia Grant about how the reasoning that fuelled support for the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – that citizens too young to vote were old enough to fight – applied to women – led me...

The War Within: Creating New Soviet Men Out of the Women of the Leningrad Blockade

Fascinated by food as a basis and dimension of war and inspired by Sara’s mentioning a study finding women survived better than men during the blockade of Leningrad, I have been doing some reading on the event. Namely, I’ve been reading The War Within, by Alexis Peri,...

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...

Conflict and Denial

In the week 3 reading on Wiremu Tamihana and the Mana of Christianity, Head argued that “[h]ow Christ was reflected in the colony … rather than faithfulness to the Treaty of Waitangi, was the tool of evaluation of British rule that Māori found meaningful.” When...

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...

The need to see the context of conflicts, or, Why does Team Defence Fort Two have so much lore?

When engaging with media the essential nature of context to conflicts becomes obvious as context follows conflict even when not, arguably, needed. An excellent example of this is found in Valve's Team Fortress Two which, despite the game being America's #1 war-themed...

Sex through the ages – considering orientation and Orientalism

Dr Patrick Thomsen’s examination of sexual identity in the context of Saïd’s Orientalism led me to consider how while the East-West dynamic certainly penetrates sexual discourse*, we should also consider how perceptions of sexuality change over time. The covert...

Cemetery Gates

I’m finding dealing with the global pandemic fallout difficult. The idea that I’m living through a challenging historical event repeats in my brain like The Smiths song 'Cemetery Gates'. These uncertain times have often made me anxious. I’m aware this is a global...

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...

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