Emily Burgess, who studied for PhD in history at the University of Portsmouth, has had a paper published in Women’s History Review which is free to read here. The paper looks at press depiction of Alice Diamond, leader of the interwar Forty Thieves gang. By mythmaking, framing Diamond as an ‘Underworld Amazon’, ‘Giant’, and ‘Queen of the Terrors’, the press was able to project female gangsterism as a form of ‘internal terror’ to fuel fears over gender, post-war brutalisation and the changing interwar landscape.See a previous post about Emily’s work on London’s female gangsters here. Emily is a graduate of the University, having studied for a BA (Hons) History degree […]
Tag Archives | nineteenth century
Community collaboration in action
Over the last year, the History team’s Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has been working with a local history group to find out more about our region’s railway workers. Here he reveals more about this exciting partnership – including where you can see what they’ve produced. Increasingly over the last few years my research has become much more collaborative in approach. That’s largely to do with my work as co-lead of the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The project looks at accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939, working with teams of volunteers at the National Railway Museum, the Modern Records Centre at the University […]
National Archives podcast – People of the Railways
As part of the nation-wide series of events to mark two hundred years of the railways, The National Archives of the UK ‘On the Record’ railway-focused podcast invited our own Dr Mike Esbester in as an expert. Together with archivists, Mike drew on his research and 25 years of using The National Archives to discuss early railway travellers and their experiences, and railway accidents, drawing on Mike’s work for the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The podcast is available here.
Charting The Perilous Deep
Below, our own Karl Bell, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social History, writes about his exciting new book on the supernatural legends associated with the seafarers of the Atlantic Ocean. Karl’s research specialises in supernatural and environmental history, the history of beliefs and mentalities, folklore, and Victorian popular culture, on which he has published extensively. The modules Karl teaches at Portsmouth include a third-year special subject on Magic and Modernity, a new second-year option on The Age of Crisis and Victorian Enchantments for the MA in Victorian Gothic: History, Literature and Culture. My new book, The Perilous Deep – A Supernatural History of the Atlantic (Reaktion Books) offers a different […]
‘Jazzed Up’: the origins and impact of jazz in America
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 […]
Researching the life stories of our local railway workers
In a project sponsored by the university’s Heritage Hub, Dr Mike Esbester has been working collaboratively with members of the Havant Local History Group on the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project. This researches the life stories of ten local railway workers from the 1870s to 1939 and relates to the wider Railway Work, Life & Death project database of accidents to railway workers, so this coproductive project has been about taking the accident or mention in the RWLD database as a starting point and going beyond it. In cooperation with The Community Rail Partnership (Hills to Harbour) and the community organisation Creating Chaos they have recently installed interpretation posters at […]