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 Call for Duty!

When looking at the various depictions of war that we’ve seen thus far – in art, literature, music and even sand -, there is a notable exception: the humble videogame. Ever since rising to prominence in the 1980s, videogames have been seen entertaining millions, but...

On peering at the world through a microscope

As a student of Global Studies and Sociology, my learning often centres on people and social structures. This involves a fair amount of generalising and theorising about people whom I have no lived experiences with. For example, when we were asked to make a...

We can’t breathe

2020 strikes again the world reacts to the lynching of George Floyd; Fuel to the flame that’s been growing with every murder. In the last few weeks there has been unprecedented publicity of the mistreatment of indigenous, Black and other minority groups that continues...

The War of Ideology

The mid-20th century saw the Cold War rise out of the ashes of the most destructive armed conflict in history, the hasty alliance brokered between two titans crumbling a mere two years after the fall of Nazi Germany. Yet, as the East and West fought to expand their...

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...

Co-Create! Don’t Hate!

Anthropology is fascinating. I love the way it makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar. However, whilst studying it I have often thought about the ethical nature of producing research on a culture that is not your own. As the written word holds great power...

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...

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...

Having a yarn not having a yawn.

Ok, so I’m about to summarise some truth handed down from Patrick Thomsen. So this man rocks up onto the stage and immediately I’m enthralled. Was he talking about a data set vaguer than UoA’s marking schemes? No. He came onto the stage and started yarning, chewing...

Marriage or the internet – which matures a 19-year-old more?

Frost's discussion of the fight for youth voting rights encapsulated many talking points about civil rights, democracy, protest and strength in diversity. What grabbed my attention the most, however, was one throw-away line in the middle of her lecture. “Youth today...

Finding Middle Ground

Reading the article on the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibition and visiting the Auckland War Memorial Museum, there was a clear theme. Both acknowledged the tension between commemoration and scholarship in relation to conflict. This got me thinking about how we often...

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A tale of two histories

A tale of two histories

Set in the four walls of the museum lies the material evidence of worlds long gone. It is a temple what history wishes it was; artefacts, evidence, objectivity, truth. That material truth, woven in shields, parchment, uniforms, and polished war planes is a comfort to...

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Hot men dying for their epic countries

Hot men dying for their epic countries

When we walked into the World War I memorial in the museum my feeling was one of disconnect and apathy and slight irritation. While I respect the remembrance of lives lost, I can’t help but feel a little removed from and annoyed by what seems like a glorification of...

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Conflicts in the Media

I always wondered how conflicts were shown in the media overseas. This is because I used to watch the news and think about why we only got to see a certain perspective of the conflict. It usually is seen to make your own country look really good or make them look like...

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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...

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