Category Archives: History

Stranger Things 3: Cold War Gone Upside Down

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By Anne Liebig| 02 October 2019
SPOILERS AHEAD. On 4th July 2019, the third season of Stranger Things hit Netflix and quickly pulled off its favourite stunt – defying the sequel trap. Once again, the show satisfied viewer demands and climbed to critics’ top scores for the third time running. The long-awaited return to monster-ridden Hawkins not only features delightful performances by its stellar cast, but also widens the playing field for the series’ baddies: other than the familiar killer goo that is the Demogorgon, who are Hawkins’ child heroes up against in 1980s America, and on the most patriotic of holidays no less? You’ve guessed it: the Russians.

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Pockets and the fight for the female body

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By Orlaith Darling| 03 September 2019
I have dropped my phone down the toilet several times. Why? The pockets in women’s clothing. I own jeans with pockets into which I can barely fit my hand. I own jeans which have the cruel illusion of pockets stitched into the fabric. It is a fairly well-known fact that, as one writer puts it, ‘mid-range fashion is a male dominated business, driven not by form and function, but by design and how fabric best drapes the body.’

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The woman in German poetry: Heinrich Heine’s ‘Die Lorelei’ and J. W von Goethe’s ‘Der Fischer’

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Emanuela Militello | 28 May 2019
I am going to focus on the portrayal of women as supernatural characters in two ballads by notable German poets: Heinrich Heine’s ‘Die Lorelei’ and J.W von Goethe’s ‘Der Fischer’, in order to give an insight into how their characterisation of women is influenced by Greek mythology.
In both ballads, women use their voice to entice the man – in a manner reminiscent of the power of sirens in the Odyssey, where sirens are infamous for luring sailors with their voices and for their uncanny appearance. The unfortunate ones who listen to their seductive singing, shipwreck against the rocks of the sirens’ island and meet a horrible death.

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Shakespeare vs. Pushkin – On Not Reading National Poets, or: A Tragedy in Two Acts

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Anne Liebig | 4 February, 2019
To be or not to be – who has not heard, used, or abused this phrase, written down over 400 years ago? Who cannot conjure up a spontaneous image of the Bard, or name at least one of his plays? Shakespeare has performed a feat that few other writers have achieved across the globe: he has been elevated to a symbol of national culture. But when did you last stop and ask yourself what the point of having a so-called national poet really was?

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