For his dissertation, third-year UoP history student Jacob Canavan chose to focus on Polish Protestantism which, while largely forgotten and repressed at home, proved to have a significant influence abroad, in spreading ideas which were to influence enlightenment thought across Europe. Jacob’s supervisor was Dr Fiona McCall. Jacob has been accepted to continue on to study for a Master’s degree at the University of York, the alma mater of our own Drs Katy Gibbons and Mike Esbester and Professor Dave Andress and a great place to study religious history. When one thinks about Poland and its history, one rarely conjures the image of a Protestant church, with its pristine white […]
Author Archive | Fiona McCall
Looking at memorials and practices of memorialisation
For their Thinking Like An Historian module we take our first-year students to look at some of the memorials in Portsmouth, and then they write a piece for their portfolio assessment on a memorial of our choice. Here are some of the memorials chosen by students for further analysis: Memorials in Portsmouth Cathedral Sofia de Freitas Franco chose the Historic Windows located in the north wall of the Quire and the south wall of the Navy Aisle of Portsmouth Cathedral. She finds stained glass windows a rather beautiful way to commemorate lost lives. Each of these different windows represent a different historical figure who were very significant in their […]
“In God is our trust” – How evangelical Christians became so crucial to Trump’s Republican Party
Elliott Thomas is a second-year history student at the University of Portsmouth, and studied modern US history with Dr Lee Sartain as part of the first-year World Histories module. In the wake of Trump’s presidential victory, he discusses how the evangelical Christians and the Republican Party came to be so closely aligned. In the early hours of November the 6th, the victorious Republican president elect Donald Trump would give his victory speech to a crowd of his supporters, who would soon break out into the popular Evangelical hymn “How Great Art Thou”.[1] Despite being mired in controversy, including being put on trial for paying hush money to cover up an […]
From a Portsmouth history degree to conserving historic buildings at York
Mature student Mandy Wrenn was a great influence on the younger students while studying history at Portsmouth, and is still in touch with many of them. We still use her blog on urban football as a model for students on the Underworlds model thinking about how to analyse sources for their document commentary assignment. Below she describes how she went on to study (and gain a distinction) for a Masters degree in conserving historic buildings at the University of York. Figuring out what to do after a history degree isn’t always straightforward. Some people have a plan, but for many, it’s a case of working out how their skills fit […]
Students visit 17th century Portsmouth
For the third-year UOP history specialist option Britain in Revolution, students are taken on a visit round Old Portsmouth to see some evidence of Portsmouth’s 17th century history. Portsmouth was strategically important in the Britain’s Civil Wars and also famously the place where the Duke of Buckingham was stabbed to death by John Felton. Here are some of this year’s students outside the house where this happened on the High Street, which was followed by a visit to Buckingham’s elaborate tomb in the cathedral including a memento mori skull. The cathedral itself lost its tower during the siege of 1642, thanks to the parliamentary gunners firing from Gosport.
The Devil’s Highway
Our own Professor Brad Beaven has published a new book about Ratcliffe Highway, the heart of London’s sailortown, which had a notorious reputation for knife crime and immorality in the nineteenth century. You can listen to a recording of Brad talking about the book here. No doubt some of the material from the book will work its way into Brad’s second-year history option, Underworlds: Crime, Deviance and Punishment in Britain 1500-1900.