Month: April 2018

You can, to my mind, apply a transnational lens to practically anything. I remember jotting down a series of notes in the first seminar upon which I subsequently mused and wrote at length: of the possibility of historical axioms; of

History in St Andrews had taught me a lot… Or so I thought. Transnational history is not a class that attempts to destroy or even discredit certain historiographical schools of thought and widely-acknowledged conceptions of history writing. However, Dr. Struck

It feels like just yesterday that I was sitting in MO3351 for the first time, somewhat apprehensive about the semester. I’ll be completely honest and say that the reason I was wary of the module had nothing to do with

There’s a lot to say about this module as it comes to an end. When I registered for it, I really hadn’t grasped just how new of an experience this would turn out to be for me. It really wasn’t

Now that we have finished a full semester of transnational history, I am firmly convinced that traditional history is in some way lacking if it does not incorporate a transnational perspective. I also am somewhat amazed that my exposure to

My original idea for my big project proposal, way back in February, was to focus on pirates. I love reading about them, despite the fact that had I been on a ship under attack by them in their heyday (1630-1730,

A whole semester doing and practicing transnational history means that we’re bound to learn some things. I mean, that would be the hope, right? I’ve decided to make a note of the top 5 things that I think I’ve learnt

Over the past couple weeks the direction of my project has taken a pretty significant shift in a new direction. As I began to narrow my geographical scope, I found that there is a lot of historical richness to be

In Syracuse, the tyrant Hieron bribed Astylos, a successful Olympic athlete, to compete in the 480 and 484 BC Olympic Games under the national banner of Syracuse. Astylos accepted this offer and the bribe. In Croton (where Astylos was from),

In recent weeks, I’ve been doing some research into China’s 1911 revolution, led by Sun-Yat Sen. The revolution started in Wuhan in the Hubei Province with an army mutiny and a battle between rebels and Qing loyalists. The Qing dynasty,

For Asians (and expats in Asia), this has caused decades of arguments as to which is a better place to live, to work, and to play. Apart from the obvious – that Hong Kong is clearly better – a transnational

 View of Suzdal’ from the Kamenka River, 1912 For once I am not sitting down to write about the Spanish flu. This week, while working on another essay (this one on Russia) I started thinking about one of my favorite

Since I’ve been lacking in motivation as to what to write for my blog post, and did not want to delve into yet another piece on my long project, I decided to think about the transnationalism of a topic that’s

Given that most of you have already written blog posts on your end of year projects already, I thought I would share a little bit about how mine is progressing so far. For those of you who do not know

I have been merrily researching the Spanish flu for several weeks now. My flatmates have been regaled with interesting facts about cytokines and death tolls. While discussing politics with my visiting family over spring break, I informed everyone at the