hook’s engaged pedagogy is deeply connected to the idea of decolonisation. Although bell hooks comes from a particular imperial background – a “rural southern black experience (…) through the struggle for racial desegregation” in the USA – her ideas speak to a broader audience outside North America.
This article is chiefly an examination of an ivory-white porcelain from Ding kiln in Quyang produced for mass domestic use during the Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE).[1] This porcelain shows a pair of male Mandarin ducks which, this article contends, could be read as a trace of queer aesthetics.
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.
Many of the artefacts we see today in the ‘Ancient Near East’ collections of European and American museums were purchased in the late 19th and early 20th century from dealers who specialised in smuggling archaeological artefacts to Europe from Baghdad.
Though I would not refer to myself as one, being ‘a colonial’ is an uncomfortable place to be when your ancestors were simultaneously the victims of horrific British penal codes, and also the instigators of genocide.
More about this episode Saffa Khalil Interviewee Saffa is an interdisciplinary researcher and recent SOAS graduate in History and African Studies. Her work is mainly concerned with the ability of music to shape our understanding of transnational identities and historiography. Dissertation Abstract: From intimate moments to more comprehensive historical events, Sudanese music provides a lens…
More about this episode Mia Bellouere Interviewee Mia is an undergrad alumni from SOAS with a degree in History and Korean. Having worked in the arts for charity and organisational development sectors, she is currently pursuing a career in humanitarian project management. Dissertation Abstract: Mia’s paper examines the experience of childhood in colonial Algeria,…
by Darja Wolfmeier Résumé: Depuis 1991, une série de 13 fresques d’Hervé di Rosa est accrochée aux murs de l’Assemblée nationale française, représentant des étapes majeures de l’histoire constitutionnelle française – l’une d’entre elles étant l’Abolition de l’esclavage dans les colonies en 1794. Cette représentation ne reproduit pas seulement des stéréotypes racistes, mais s’inscrit également dans…
SOAS History Blog Podcast Ep 1: Black Caribbean experiences of Racism, Discrimination and the State
The diaries of steamship officer and artefact trader Joseph Svoboda reveal both the personal and political sides of archeological trading in the late 19th t early 20th centuries.
