Gjon Mili, 1950 © Time Inc.

On Friday 15th November from 2 – 3.30pm Kevin Guyan, PhD candidate in the History Department, will explore the dance hall as a site of social and cultural exchange for the black community of Bloomsbury in the 1940s. This participative event will include music and images from the period and will also be an opportunity for those in attendance to share and discuss memories of ‘going dancing’ in the mid-20th century.

Helen Cobby talked to Kevin about his up-coming event and what participants can expect:  (more…)

Firstly, I need to apologise for the lack of immediacy in writing a blog about the year 8 “spring school” that I ran on behalf of UCL’s Museums and Collections last week. With my teenage years a distant memory, a bit of R and R was required to recover from the energy of 38 constantly excited 13 year olds.

Reconstructing the look of a plague doctor

That aside, it was certainly a week to remember! Participants witnessed a barber surgeon in action, analysed animal poo, and created their own alien dissection, all in the name of education.  They discussed the ethics of human display, philosophised over what makes us human, and took great pleasure in analysing the “worth” of a dismembered foot that had been consumed with dry gangrene. (more…)

The Petrie Museum’s Fit Bodies Exhibition on display in the Museum and North Cloisters is drawing to a close (in the Cloisters space) and, whilst I will be happy to get my trusty wooden lacrosse stick back, I am sad this exhibition is ending. Fit Bodies has included a variety of elements, from photographic competitions to theatrical performances in a light-hearted take on the notion of ‘fit’, an adjective accredited to sporting prowess as well as sexual appeal. However, one notion I realised only after giving a seminar on the exhibition, was this expectation of the elite to be attractive, in particular I think of the recent sportsmen and women who have proved their value through trial, tribulation, yet are still presented on that sordid platter of sexuality.

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