History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | violence

Josiah King, The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas

Have yourself a puritan Christmas

By on December 16, 2020 in Research in Focus

Dr Fiona McCall is a lecturer in early modern history, teaching units on the British Civil Wars, and Crime, Sin and Punishment in early modern Britain, amongst others. Her current research project investigates traditionalist resistance to puritan values in English parish churches during the 1640s and 1650s, and in this blog she discusses how Christmas was banned during this period. Christmas was officially banned during the late 1640s and 1650s along with the rest of the church calendar.  But the interdict was widely ignored.  Trawling through various counties’ quarter sessions depositions for the period, I have found frequent references to Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and various saints days, the witnesses (even those testifying […]

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1280px-Gunpowder_Plot_conspirators

Gunpowder, treason and plot: Difficult pasts and how we remember them

By on November 5, 2018 in Research in Focus

The BBC series Gunpowder, screened at this time last year, sparked some lively debate. In this blog post, our Dr Katy Gibbons reflects on some of the responses to that series, particularly the graphic depictions of violence enacted by the state. Katy’s research looks at religious exile in Early Modern Europe, its impact on the home and host societies, and what it reveals about the complex interactions between groups of coreligionists in different parts of Europe. The end of October often brings a focus on Halloween. The celebrations including pumpkins, trick or treat and fancy dress have tended to shift the focus away from a specifically British celebration of Guy […]

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AIDS pic

Homophobia surrounding the 1980s AIDS crisis

By on February 20, 2018 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Rory Herbert, final year History student and President of the History Society at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog on the 1980s AIDS crisis and the homophobic behaviour it triggered. Rory is a Gale Ambassador at the university and contributes to The Gale Review Blog. The role of the Gale Ambassador is to increase awareness of the Gale primary source collections available to students at their university. The University Of Portsmouth Library hosts a large collection of Gale primary sources which History students can use when undertaking archival research for their dissertations and other research projects. During the early 1980s, AIDS became an ever-growing concern in the minds of Americans, and […]

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The execution of the eight surviving conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. Wellcome Images via Wikimedia , CC BY-SA

Forget gory Gunpowder – Jacobean England had a bloodcurdling appetite for violence

By on November 3, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, has published an article in The Conversation. Here she reflects on responses to the violent scenes in the recent BBC 1 series Gunpowder, in particular the depictions of executions of Catholics by the Protestant authorities. This discussion reflects her research interests in early modern Catholicism in England and Europe, which is one theme in her final year special subject unit, ‘Conflict, Conspiracy, Consensus: Religious Identities in Elizabethan England’. To read the article, click here

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