Frankie Raine’s dissertation looked at how perceptions of crime in the nineteenth-century were influenced by sensationalist literary and media representations, contrasting the depiction of men involved in the mid-Victorian garrotting panic, with those of female prostitutes accused of theft. She found that the impact of literary and journalistic depictions on public understanding was mixed, intersecting in a more complex way with on pre-existing gender and class expectations. Below, she describes her research process, and gives some tips for future dissertation students. Frankie’s supervisor was Professor Brad Beaven. The abundance of media sources detailing crimes and the criminals convicted of carrying them out has long been a cause of amusement and […]
Tag Archives | popular culture
“How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” – studying Nina Simone and her times
Below Pauline Standley describes the experience of studying for a master’s degree in history (MRes) at Portsmouth. She looked at the role of Nina Simone as a civil rights activist, a feminist, and someone who reflected the broader socio-political shifts of her time. Pauline’s supervisor was Dr Lee Sartain. Nina Simone. For many, her name immediately brings to mind her iconic, richly textured voice, often accompanied by signature sounds of the trumpets and piano in timeless classics like “I Put a Spell on You” or “Feeling Good”. While these songs undoubtedly capture her unshakeable legacy, Nina Simone is also a reservoir of intersectional experiences that reveal much about the socio-political […]
“It’s all been a lot of fun really”: Concerns over modern television and the future of comedy programmes
Daniel Reast is an MRes History and BA (Hons) History and Politics graduate from the University of Portsmouth. He has written for the IAFOR Online journal and Portsmouth Postgraduate Review on the subject of comedy history, as well as his own blogs and website discussing politics and society. In this blog Daniel reflects on the development of television comedy in the modern era and asks whether it can be as ground-breaking as comedies from the so-called ‘Golden Age’of the 1970s and 1980s. In May of this year, Channel 4 was proud to present Carry on Brussels: Inside the EU, a short documentary series following the European Parliament in its daily […]