A collection of lectures organised by the Wolfson College Cambridge Humanities Society.
Latest episodes
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1 h 05 ↗
Laura Zucconi: Transgendered Copper Mining in the Levant
The description of Esau’s family in Genesis 36 and I Chronicles 1 has the figure of Timna change gender in the span of a few verses. She is a concubine, a sister, and then a…
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1 h 11 ↗
Robert Koepp - George Elliot and the Religion of Favourable Chance
Professor Robert Koepp examines how Eliot's characters struggle with the profoundly human inclination to trust in luck by worshiping at the altar of 'blessed Chance'…
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1 h 03 ↗
Bjorn L. Basberg: Maynard Keynes and his Whaling Adventures
The economist John Maynard Keynes’ activities on the stock market are well known. One company in which he bought stocks in the late 1920s was the Hector Whaling Company Ltd.…
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1 h 03 ↗
Jennifer Davis: Trade (mark) Wars, 1860-1920: Sweatshops, the Retail Trade and the Meaning of Trade Marks
A registered trade mark acts an indication of origin for goods but tells us nothing specific about the circumstances under which the goods originated. This limitation was not inevi…
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1 h 10 ↗
Simon Szreter: Social Security in Britain -cost or benefit ? A historical perspective on a 2015 general electi…
Prof Szreter will discuss the costs and benefits of the long-term history of a national social security system in Britain. He will argue that such a perspective is important for ev…
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46 min ↗
Professor Warren Dockter - Churchill and the Islamic World
In this anniversary year – 50 years since the death of Winston Churchill and 70 years since the end of WWII – Warren Dockter will look at Churchill’s long relatio…
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1 h 06 ↗
Dr Justin Colson on London Bridge
Dr Justin Colson talks about London Bridge which has existed in one form or another since the fourteenth century. He explores the social world of the Bridge in the late fifteenth c…
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1 h 01 ↗
Dr Rowan Williams - Mysticism and politics; some thoughts about St Teresa of Avila
This year is the 500th anniversary of the birth of Teresa, one of the foremost ‘mystical’ writers of the Christian tradition. Research in the last fifty years has clari…
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1 h 11 ↗
Dr Robert Amundsen - Ibsen's women on and off the stage
There were two categories of women in Henrik Ibsen’s life: the women in his dramatic universe and the women in his own life. Ibsen’s attitude to women is highly complex…
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1 h 04 ↗
Professor Julius Lipner - Hinduism: the challenges of a polycentric approach to shaping our world
Hinduism is by far the majority culture of India, which is set fair to become a superpower in the next few decades. How then does the polycentric, decentralizing phenomenon of Hind…
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1 h 16 ↗
Professor David Feldman - Israel and Antisemitism
When does criticism of Israel become antisemitic? This longstanding debate was revived last summer in the context of British and European responses to Israel’s assault on Gaz…
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59 min ↗
Adriana Alexander - The Honour of Sharing : the Sharing of Honour
How does a Lovari extended family enact the sharing of material resources, and of intangible gifts conveyed through gesture, dance, song and speech? How do these practices confer i…
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1 h 14 ↗
Professor Nigel Morgan: The Oldest Illustrated Book in Cambridge - a reconsideration of the St. Augustine Gosp…
Corpus Christi College possesses one of the oldest extant illustrated manuscripts, the St Augustine Gospels from the sixth century. This lecture discusses the origin of illustrated…
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1 h 09 ↗
Hugh Gault: C.R.Fay: The Differences between Making History and Writing It
The economic historian Charles Ryle Fay (1884-1961) was a staunch advocate of workers’ and women’s rights, and also became one of the leading British machine gunners du…
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1 h 07 ↗
Dr Alexi Baker: Technology, Tools, and Toys of Early Modern Science
Dr Alexi Baker’s research over the past decade has revealed how ‘scientific instruments’ before the rise of modern science included everything from cutting-edge t…
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1 h 15 ↗
Dr Nick Saville - Communications in a Globalised World: English is necessary but not sufficient
Cambridge English Language Assessment tests more than 5 million learners of English in over 100 countries every year and this constitutes a major asset in delivering the University…
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1 h 13 ↗
Professor Jerry White - Dickens during the Great War
The novels of Charles Dickens reached new heights of popularity during the First World War, symbolising for many the quintessence of Englishness and the values that the war was bei…
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1 h 09 ↗
Professor Robin Cormack: “The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres”. Re-visiting the…
How do artists and poets create dialogues with the past? Prof. Robin Cormack explores the way in which the artists feature in the exhibition 'Myths, Memories and Mysteries&apo…
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1 h 02 ↗
Dr Patricia Fara - Erasmus Darwin: Poet of Progress
rasmus Darwin – Charles’s grandfather – was well-known among his eighteenth- century contemporaries, highly respected by many but reviled by others. Energetic and…
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1 h 07 ↗
Dr Mary Laven: Wax, wood and narrative: the miraculous culture of Renaissance Italy
From the late fifteenth century, the walls of Italian shrines became crowded with tavolette dipinte – small painted wooden boards recording instances of sickness, violence, a…