A level studies in history and media led Damiana Kun to focus her Portsmouth history dissertation on how a patriarchal screen industry has ignored modern research and continued to attach negative stereotypes to one of history’s most famous and complex women. Damiana’s supervisor was Dr Maria Cannon. Whether someone has a deep interest in history or not, many remember the six wives of the Tudor King Henry VIII by the old English nursery rhyme: “Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived.” However, in popular culture, Anne Boleyn is perhaps the best known out of the six wives, as the one who supplanted a long-time wife and queen and set a nation […]
Tag Archives | sixteenth century
The misrepresentation of Catherine De’ Medici’s female rule
For her third-year dissertation UoP history student Sadie White looked into representations of the French Queen Catherine de’ Medici, one of several late-sixteenth century female rulers famously denounced by John Knox in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558). As Sadie describes, Catherine, foreign, from a family considered inferior in status to the French monarchy, no great looker, and barren for the first ten years of her marriage, has had a hard press over the years, both in her own time, and still today, as represented in contemporary TV and film drama. She is a salutary reminder of how female rule continues to be […]
Why the Polish Reformation deserves to be remembered
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 […]
Histories of Adulthood in Britain and the United States
In November 2024 our own Dr Maria Cannon published an edited collection Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z in the Royal Historical Society’s New Historical Perspectives series published by the University of London Press. Laura Tisdall, Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, was Maria’s co-editor. The collection looks at how ideas of adulthood have changed over the centuries and addresses two central questions: who gets to be an adult, and who decides? The chapters in the collection cover more than 600 years and two continents and are focused around four key themes: adulthood as both burden and benefit; adulthood as a relational category; collective versus individual […]
Realising and communicating a love for history, at Portsmouth and beyond
Ashleigh Hufton is remembered with great affection by the history team as a student who contributed keenly to history seminars from the outset and worked hard to develop her skills further during her studies in history at the University of Portsmouth from 2018 – 2021. Ashleigh has since been enjoying great success teaching history at secondary level. Below she writes about her studies at Portsmouth, and what she has gained from them since graduating. What I enjoyed most about my history studies at Portsmouth It is difficult to pinpoint the most enjoyable part of my degree because I genuinely loved every moment of being a student at the University […]
Communal music on board the Mary Rose: the significance and after-life of a shawm
For the second year module, The Hidden Lives of Things, taught by Dr Katy Gibbons and Dr Mary Cannon, for their assessment, students have to produce an ‘object biography’ for a historical artefact. Francesca Raine chose to look at one of the ten surviving musical instruments found on the Mary Rose and what it can tell us about how sixteen-century people experienced and enjoyed music. In 1545 the Mary Rose, a Tudor carrack, sank during a confrontation with the French fleet in Portsmouth.[1] The unusual underwater conditions preserved a unique snapshot of everyday Tudor life, revealed in the 20th century, despite earlier excavation attempts in 1545 and 1836-1840.[2] […]