What’s in a Banknote: Controlling Legacy and Shaping the Ideal Confucian Woman
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What’s in a Banknote: Controlling Legacy and Shaping the Ideal Confucian Woman

Artist Saimdang was selected to feature of the 50,000-won banknote to raise awareness of gender equality within Korea. However, this choice caused great controversy amongst many feminist commentators, who saw the selection as a way for the government to promote historic Confucian notions of gender identity and patriarchal expectations of women.

A Poem in Avar and Russia’s Soldiers in Ukraine
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A Poem in Avar and Russia’s Soldiers in Ukraine

by Zayra Badillo Castro For women, war is never over. Rasul Gamzatov, (1923-2003) Poet, Dagestan, Russian Federation Makhachkala is not a city often covered in the news.  The capital city of the Republic of Dagestan, an administrative entity under the Russian Federation located in the North Caucasus, has become a headline since the start of…

Mavo and the Space for Freedom: Masturbation, Anarchy and Autonomy in 1920s Japan
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Mavo and the Space for Freedom: Masturbation, Anarchy and Autonomy in 1920s Japan

Murayama’s photographic series Kitanai Odori displays Murayama’s body in the throes of an ecstatic nude performance, demonstrating a visual embodiment of an emancipated self. Mavo artists challenged the Japanese government’s social matrix and programme of homogeneity, and for it the group suffered dearly.

Particles Beyond Sight: Black Subjectivity and Creolization in Denis Williams’ Other Leopards
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Particles Beyond Sight: Black Subjectivity and Creolization in Denis Williams’ Other Leopards

“There was a silence at the heart of the flying bodies; there was a soundless sound; there was a motion meaningless as the awful collision of particles beyond sight; there was an energy purposeful of intention but beyond understanding. A man must lose his life to find it.”

Review of John Parker’s In My Time of Dying: a History of Death and the Dead in West Africa (Princeton University Press, 2021)
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Review of John Parker’s In My Time of Dying: a History of Death and the Dead in West Africa (Princeton University Press, 2021)

by Amelia Storey On a recent visit to my local arts centre, I found myself looking down onto their café’s courtyard from the first floor exhibition room. To my astonishment, I realised that the café tables were positioned immediately next to tombstones – close enough to lean your chair back against. I recognised then that…

Queer Baroque: Nikko Mausoleum
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Queer Baroque: Nikko Mausoleum

The construction of modern sexuality emphasises the sameness of biological gender between sexual object and sexual subject, which did not operate in Japan as it could not accommodate these existing gender constructions. The intense connection of the Nikkō Tōshōgu to the Tokugawa meant that it was intrinsically connected to a time that was becoming increasingly demonised as deviant.

SOAS History Blog Podcast, Ep. 3: Sudanese History through Music
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SOAS History Blog Podcast, Ep. 3: Sudanese History through Music

More about this episode Samples of music in this podcast have been for research and academic discussion only. Podcast transcript This is a SOAS History Blog Podcast. In this installment, we bring you Walter Rodney Prize winner Saffa Khalil discussing her award-winning dissertation with SOAS staff member Henny Ziai. For further information about the music…