ISSUE 5: Crossroads
We have chosen the theme of “Crossroads” for this issue, as all of us are currently making some major decisions in our life, be it simply the modules we wish to study or the career paths we wish to undergo. Crossroads feature heavily in history as a discipline, making it the perfect topic to explore!
We hope you enjoy.
Textual and Multimedia Editor: Duniya Jan.
Learn more about the zine here
OUR Voices
Writing Histories of Violence: How Detached Should Historians Be from Their Research?
By Jess Martinez Gorman
In the last few months, like many other third year students, I have been researching and writing my dissertation. This has been a long yet (hopefully) rewarding process and has encouraged me to engage with broader questions about history as a discipline. How far can we, as historians, distance ourselves from our subjects? Is it futile to even try?
Careers After History, The Roads You Can’t See
By Emily Chong
For many second-year history students, the theme of crossroads has never been more present than now as we decide our imminent future pathways. What career path will I commit to? Where am I truly excited to work? What options do I even have as a history student?
The Inevitability of Crossroads
By Mariam Abdallah
Hearing the theme for this month’s issue was crossroads, I had to confront myself with the question of what crossroads I’ve faced in my very short years of life. Naturally, the bulk of them were academic: deciding what GCSES to pick, whether I wanted to drop Politics or Math at A Level, what degree I wanted to pursue, and what university I wanted to attend.
Transatlantic Education: Studying History in America vs the UK
By Ella Fisher
At the end of my A Levels, I was lucky enough to face an interesting crossroad. Staying in the UK would have most likely meant moving to London to study, but I was also (somehow!) the lucky recipient of a scholarship to study in Connecticut. As a born and bred Brit, newly 18, longing for adventure and well aware this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me, the decision was an easy one. I accepted my offer to move to the States with haste and soon I was saying goodbye to my family and heading off to Heathrow.
Academic History
Challenging ‘crossroads’: the façade of decision-making in decolonising India
By Emily Chong
It is easy to assume that every major turning point in history reflected a significant crossroad and crux of decision making. However, in the case of decolonisation in India, there is much
to be said about the façade of this assumed ‘crossroad’ and we can question the extent to which the process of British withdrawal of power in 1947 was truly a conscious decision
determined by their own agency.
The British Empire standing on a crossroad: which path to choose for each country’s decolonisation?
By Stace Komarova
Crossroads is a word that we use daily and refer to the divergence of paths.
But it could be assumed that it can also work as a new useful lens for historians,
which allows them to look at historical events and analyse how else could have they potentially unfolded. An example of such is the British decolonisation that started in the 1940s and lasted until the late 1990s. Each of her colonies had varying orders there such as financial and diplomatic reliance on the metropole, making decolonisation a unique experience for each of the country.
What can a gendered analysis of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission reveal about testimonio as a historical practice, and its role in truth and justice processes?
By Jess Martínez Gorman
Peru’s Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR) has been recognised as a model for the
inclusion of gender in post-conflict processes of truth and justice. Between 2001 and 2003, the CVR investigated human rights abuses committed during Peru’s twenty-year conflict between state forces and the Peruvian insurgency group, Sendero Luminoso. Following the precedent set by truth commissions in Guatemala and South Africa, the CVR was one of the
earliest reconciliation projects to incorporate gender into its analysis of conflict-related
violence.
Intersection between the individual, the modern and Islam from the 19th century
By Lola Davies
The concept of modernity has primarily been used to describe societal developments such as globalisation, the internet revolution, and the age of information. The academic and popular analysis of the crossroads between Islam and the ‘modern’ has typically hinged on anti-Muslim tropes of Islam as a mediaeval religion, and of being the sole oppressor of women and LGBT-identifying people in Muslim countries (and increasingly in the West, due to immigration from Islamic countries). The prevalent idea is that Islam is the anti-thesis of modernity because of what many people believe is its intrinsic conservatism.
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Public History
Strangers in their own land: a review of Avi Shlaim’s memoir ‘Three Worlds’
By Maria Ivanova
Avi Shlaim is a prominent historian of the Middle East, who was part of the movement of the ‘New Historians’. The group of scholars emerged in the 1980s, challenging the traditional Israeli historical narratives of the establishment of the state in 1948. Having already established himself as a successful historian with several book publications, Shlaim’s latest, Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew, takes a different form – a memoir.
Britain at Crossroads: Imperial nostalgia, Social Change and Racial Anxiety – Explaining the Prevalence of 1970s TV Icons today
By Keira Blasse
It’s a natural part of ageing to romanticise what we enjoyed growing up, and to decry the newer generation’s inferior substitutes. For a generation of Britons, their nostalgic bias was shaped by 1970s comedy shows such as Coronation Street and Fawlty Towers, and the iconic characters that they introduced. The characters remain at the forefront of cultural memory beyond normal nostalgic bias, and a cult of personality has developed around them.
We hope you enjoyed our third Spring Issue: Crossroads. See below for some of our older editions!
