Miles Orr’s dissertation explored the origins of jazz by examining the lives and lyrics of three key African-American artists: Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Bolden. Miles’s supervisor was Dr Lee Sartain, who has a special interest in Louisiana’s history – see his recent blog post on Louisiana’s civil rights activism. Miles is continuing to master’s study, where he will research Louis Armstrong’s life and influence in more detail. Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Bolden – African Americans who were part of an era of racial segregation, music and culture. This dissertation aimed to explore and uncover the origins of jazz music in America, tracing it back to its African roots […]
Archive | Learning in Focus
Learning in Focus
The Allied bombing campaign and the destruction of two cities
Third-year UoP history student Rebekah Money describes the research she carried out for her dissertation on the allied bombing campaign against German cities during World War II. Rebekah’s supervisor was Dr Rob James. Most people learn in school about the blitzkrieg tactics and the fear that the Nazis brought to the countries of Europe at the start of the Second World War. However, outside of a specialist focus we, as a country, rarely take the time to consider how damaging our own bombing campaign was. This was one of my thoughts when I was considering my dissertation topic in February 2024. I wanted to focus on a part and side […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.