History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Author Archive | Fiona McCall

Reiss Simms

Top tips for beginning your study of history at Portsmouth

By on October 5, 2020 in Learning in Focus

Reiss Sims, one of last year’s first-year students, offers some great tips for those beginning their study of history at the University of Portsmouth in 2020. “The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the U.S. Now let me start off by apologising for the classic “insert quote by famous person” approach to the start of this blog, but I do believe that Roosevelt hit the nail on the head – the study of history provides us with the understanding of the world we live in and outlines the possibilities for change, so congratulations for joining the […]

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Third-year history – don’t be daunted and have confidence you will be OK

By on October 5, 2020 in Learning in Focus, Uncategorized

Ben Humphreys, who graduated in history with the UoP this year, expected to find his third year of history studies hard but actually found he had acquired the skills and resilience in his previous two years of study to get through the third year smoothly.   There are a lot of assumptions that the third year of university is the hardest both in terms of quantity and quality of work.  There’s also a huge assumption that the first year is a walk in the park – just fun and games and a busy social life. To be honest, I found first year really hard; I struggled to understand what was expected […]

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The banality and brutality of war: Wilfred Owen’s letter to his mother, Susan Owen, February 1917

By on August 13, 2020 in Learning in Focus

In the second in our series on First World War sources, second-year UoP student Charlotte Lewis discusses what can be learned from a letter by famed WWI poet Wilfred Owen to his mother Susan. Whilst Wilfred Owen’s poetry is well known for describing the horrors of the First World War, his letters to his mother, Susan Owen, give the reader an insight into Owen’s personal experiences and reactions hiding behind his poetry. In light of this, this blog will focus on a letter written by Owen in February 1917 to his mother.[1] Through the analysis of this letter, this blog will try to convey not only its significant use in […]

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Normalising the brutality of the Somme: a soldier writes to his aunt, 13 October 1916

By on August 12, 2020 in Learning in Focus

In the first of a series on First World War sources, in this blog second year UoP student Oliver Rooney discusses the experiences of Charles Wyndham Wynne, expressed through his letter to his aunt Sophia Sarah Wynne on the 13th October 1916, several months before his death in June 1917, as well as the historiography surrounding the importance and limitations of First World War letters. [1] The atrocities of the First World War have been conveyed through personal letters between soldiers and their families. These personal sources provide historians with a first-hand understanding of the soldier’s experiences during wartime, and the emotions they conveyed and attempted to conceal from their […]

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Elizabeth I seeks friends amongst the Eastern Islamic powers

By on July 23, 2020 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

After a talk with his eventual dissertation supervisor Dr Katy Gibbons, third-year UoP student Richard Grainger was inspired to enrich his knowledge of twentieth-century orientalism in a dissertation which applied his theoretical understanding to the study of a period when Islamic nations were the more dominant powers. The university’s history department prides itself on delivering a socially and culturally favoured degree curriculum. The emphasis on ‘history from below’ has been particularly enjoyable from my view. One particular historical approach of interest is postcolonial studies, which focus on the cultural impact of empire on the colonised. Edward Said has been influential, and often controversial within this area of study. In Said’s […]

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From folk tale to cheap consumer good to object of wonder – the life history of a toby jug

By on July 9, 2020 in Learning in Focus

Our new UoP history module, The Extraordinary and the Everyday: People, Places and Possessions, taught by Dr Katy Gibbons and Dr Maria Cannon, studies material evidence – objects, buildings, landcapes – as a starting point for asking questions about the past.  It employs an innovative form of assessment – the object biography, which recognises that material artefacts, just like people, accumulate histories and have their own life-stories to tell, about the meanings and values of the societies that produced, collected or consumed them.  Harry Odgers’ object biography told the complex story of a seemingly simple drinking vessel, a ‘Toby jug’. Objects of the past are incredibly useful and can offer […]

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