TMO History
The Age of Richard Nixon – a study in cultural power
What do you think of when you think of Richard Nixon? Watergate, Vietnam, the televised debates with John .F. Kennedy? or perhaps you imagine the sweating, nervous, paranoiac portrayed by Antony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s biopic Nixon? Images that emphasise his failures, that suggest a man unfit to be President, a villain and one thus [...]
Terrorism in Dostoevsky and Conrad – a Response from Irish History
The romantic view of terrorists as misfits and lost souls, presented by Dostoevsky and Conrad in their work, is very much at odds with the practical and structured guerilla warfare that was seen during Ireland’s War of Independence
Images, piety and women in late medieval devotion: The Hunt Crucifixion with Saint Clare.
First published in the journal of the University of Limerick History Society, History Studies, vol.6 (2005), pp.2-17. The small fourteenth-century Florentine panel in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, shows an image of the Crucifixion. Beside the cross the Virgin falls in a swoon, supported by one of the holy women and St John the Evangelist. At [...]
Who’s to blame? The Fosse Ardeatine and the struggle over memory in modern Italy.
One of the most infamous attacks against civilians, during the brief and bloody end-phase of the second world war in Italy, took place on March 24th 1944. The victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre were three-hundred-and-thirty-five Italian men, a fact recognised by all. Less clear, at least in popular memory, have been those ultimately responsible [...]
Sexuality, Sin, and Sacrifice – Deconstructing the Patriarchy. An interview with Dr. Mary Condren
Censorship is not limited to totalitarian States. It can be a subtle thing, when disconcerting ideas are not banned, but, through various means, marginalised. Dr. Mary Condren’s groundbreaking work The Serpent and the Goddess, a study on women, religion and power in Celtic Ireland, was never placed on an index of banned books, and yet [...]
Football and Fascism – The creation of Italy’s Serie A
On the 2nd of August this year (2005), football fans from the Sicilian city of Messina blockaded the strategic ferry route between the city and the Italian peninsula, protesting against their club’s relegation to Serie B. Another small episode in a long history of impassioned football support, and political intrigue (the Sicilian club were re-admitted [...]
Cosa Nostra – rebranding the Mafia.
“The mafia, in the strict sense of Cosa Nostra, the hierarchical criminal organization based in Sicily, does not ‘run Italy’ as you sometimes hear people rather glibly say,” explains John Dickie, senior lecturer in Italian at the University of London, and author of Cosa Nostra – a history of the Sicilian Mafia. It’s in response [...]
From Fertility Symbol to Political Propaganda – Decoding the Massa Marittima Mural.
In the year 2000, during restoration work, a rare and important mural was uncovered at the communal fountain of the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima. It was not necessarily a welcome surprise, at least at first, as this painting from the Middle Ages depicted a tree covered with phalluses. “At first when the painting was [...]
Mapping the past – the Historian’s dilemma.
Historians take from the past only what suits their purposes. Of the last 2500 years of historiography the above statement probably holds true for most of the period and for most of the historians. It can be argued that it is the historian’s job to take from the past what suits their purpose. The Historian [...]
Seventeenth Century Dutch Art – Recording the Visual World
Dutch art from the seventeenth century is an illustration of life and culture and, taken as a distinct period, it is characterised by acute attention to detail of the physical world. Pictures record the world but they are inexorably bound up with the perception of the world by the artist. The emergence of the Dutch [...]
Myth, Ritual and Orthodoxy: Cosimo de’ Medici and Saint Peter Martyr.
Within the confined space of the walled city of Medicean Florence was a web formed of overlapping identities and loyalties: family and kin, parish, neighbourhood, gonfalone and quarter, confraternity, guild, and, of course, the city itself. Mediating these identities were the cults of saints, who were patrons of institutions and people. The relationship between patron [...]
The Role of the Machine in Twentieth Century Art
The machine is the single most defining entity of the twentieth century. Its role at the turn of the century was a central one: it was the dawn of the modern age facilitated by the energy and productivity of the machine. The focus of life shifted from the rural to the urban, from day to [...]
Football and Fascism – The creation of Italy’s Serie A
On the 2nd of August this year (2005), football fans from the Sicilian city of Messina blockaded the strategic ferry route between the city and the Italian peninsula, protesting against their club’s relegation to Serie B. Another small episode in a long history of impassioned football support, and political intrigue (the Sicilian club were re-admitted [...]
A Perfect Red – the history of cochineal
“Two centuries ago no one could have imagined that something as valuable as cochineal, ranked alongside gold and silver as one of the great treasures of the Spanish empire, would eventually be forgotten,” explains historian Amy Butler Greenfield, author of A Perfect Red. Cochineal, for the uninitiated is a small insect that when dried and [...]
Cosa Nostra – rebranding the Mafia.
“The mafia, in the strict sense of Cosa Nostra, the hierarchical criminal organization based in Sicily, does not ‘run Italy’ as you sometimes hear people rather glibly say,” explains John Dickie, senior lecturer in Italian at the University of London, and author of Cosa Nostra – a history of the Sicilian Mafia. It’s in response [...]
A history of Fear. Professor Joanna Bourke in interview
“In the words of Archdeacon R.H.Charles in 1931, science may have ‘exposed many superstitions of the dark ages and laid bare the falsity of the religious and secular magic of the past and present, yet in their stead it has introduced legions of new alarms that beset our lives from the cradle to the grave’” [...]
