“It’s always fun to talk about Shakespeare,” quipped Caroline Bicks at the start of her lecture, “Incited Minds, Rethinking Shakespeare’s Girls.” I couldn’t agree more. Much like the title of her lecture indicates, Bicks’ talk centered on stereotypes that surround adolescent girls and how the strong-Willed (pun intended) females of Shakespeare’s plays defy them. After…
Author: alhays
LaRP Or MARRCA? by Josephine DiNovo
Have you ever seen people on the grassy hill in front of Hayes wielding swords or quarterstaffs? Do you stop to snicker at the “LARPers” whenever you spy them? Have you ever really thought about what this group does? This group—often mistaken for role-players unafraid of the public—is MARRCA. MARRCA stands for Medieval and Renaissance…
What Have the Vikings Ever Done For Us? Organized Warfare in Goidelic Ireland By Colin McGarry
Many scholars believe that during the Viking Age the Scandinavian raiders and settlers brought into Ireland a new style of warfare, introducing concepts like total war and formation fighting into Ireland, which previously fought in small raids as its form of waging war. However, this theory disregards the large amount of evidence that the Goidels…
Frankly, My Dear: A history of the Franks Casket By Elizabeth House
In 1867, Augustus Wollaston Franks donated a carved whalebone box to the British Museum. Called the Franks Casket, the box dates from the Northumbrian Renaissance— between 690 and 750 AD—and was probably created in a monastic setting, before it wound up in a shrine and then in a family home in Auzon, France, where it…
The Importance of Riddling By Patricia DeMarco
Tucked away in the Rare Book archives on the second floor of Beeghly Library is a facsimile of a rare, handwritten manuscript over 1,000 years old known as the Exeter Book. The original manuscript, dating from the late tenth century and owned by the Exeter Cathedral Library, holds the greatest treasures of English literature including…
The Life of a Saint By Rebecca Pollard
When we think of saints, we often think of holy, celibate, virtuous people, and when we think of holy, celibate, virtuous people, oftentimes our eyes will glaze over, drool will spill from our mouths, and we will be shaken awake by angry people who like talking of such boring things. Yet, if we go beyond…
Do You Play Croquet? By Becca Pollard
It is almost that time…the time when normally civilized students and professors resort to their most base qualities in an attempt to seek vengeance on poor grades or late papers…the time for The Annual AMRS Croquet Death Match. For one day, we students will put aside our chosen time periods and join together on the…
Whose English and When It Matters by Abby Dockter
It seems when people travel to English-speaking countries, the most noticeable differences are ones that don’t matter very much. So you say “hob” and I say “stove.” I call that arrangement of stars “The Big Dipper” and you call it “The Plow.” You say “ye” and I thought no one had used that form of…
Amsterdam’s Museums: A Guide by Amadea Weber
This will be a rather brief (as brief as I can make it) summary of a trip I took with one of my art history classes (Genre Painting, heavy emphasis on Dutch painting) to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The trip was a lot of fun, especially because, as one of three Americans (and the only one…
Greetings from Cork! by Abby Dockter
So, confession time: I am not an AMRS kid. More importantly, though, I am personally acquainted with the mascot, and maybe ye of AMRS bent will get something out of the gibbering of an English/Anthropology/Sociology student abroad in Ireland. They told us at Orientation that culture shock is a W curve. When you get here,…