The Identity of the St Bees Lady, Cumbria: An Osteobiographical Approach

Using an Osteobiographical approach, this contribution considers the identity of the woman found alongside the St Bees Man, one of the best-preserved archaeological bodies ever discovered. Osteological, isotopic and radiocarbon analyses, combined with the archaeological context of the burial and documented social history, provide the basis for the identification of a late 14th-century heiress whose activities were at the heart of medieval northern English geopolitics.

‘Scripture its own interpreter’: Mary Martha Sherwood, the Bible and female autobiography

This is a reading of the work of Mary Martha Sherwood, the Victorian Evangelist and Children’s Author (and pupil at the Abbey School, Reading). Based upon research on Sherwood’s private correspondences and diary conducted at UCLA with the aid of a Mitzi Myers (this before my arrival at Reading), the essay offers a radical reinterpretation of her work. Previously understood in terms of a rigid, if self-contradictory and ‘anxious’, Evangelism, the essay reads the diary through Sherwood’s little known Biblical scholarship. Through this I argue that Sherwood grants her own writing the status of Biblical truth precisely because of its contradictions and ‘anxiety’.

Piety and sociability in early modern women's devotional writing

The letters of early modern women demonstrate that their experience of religion was essentially social, contrary to the impression created by much modern work on diaries or meditations. The stereotypical melancholic, pious lady is far from the ideal offered by spiritual advisors, women and men, in their correspondence. Letters demonstrate how women created networks of spiritual support within and beyond their families. Letters also testify to the agency exercised by early modern women in religious matters, particularly in their assumption of the role of religious advisor and in their engagement with ecclesiastical politics. While this is far from showing that religion empowered all early modern women, it does offer a corrective to the unduly gloomy view of the role of religion in such women's lives. Letters provide indispensable testimony to the social nature of women's responses to the changing religious culture and politics of the eighteenth century.

Breaking the Conventions : Shakespeare, the Fair Young Man and the Dark Lady

The aim of this essay is to show how Shakespeare’s sonnets violated and reversed the conventional ideas in terms of beauty and idealisation. Furthermore, I will examine the way Shakespeare presented his beloved woman as an absolute opposite of the one created by Petrarch, and how he shifted all the divine metaphors from a woman to a fair young man, creating a new object of praise and admiration.

Lady Gaga, allt handlar om strategi? : En studie kring vem eller vilka personer och vilka faktorer som skapade superstjärnan Lady Gaga

De frågeställningar som jag har utgått från är vem eller vilka personer, och vilka andra faktorer skapade superstjärnan Lady Gaga? Har Lady Gaga blivit framgångsrik på egen hand eller huvudsakligen som ett resultat av andra personer och deras inverkan? Syftet är att analysera bakgrunden till Lady Gagas enorma succé och utforska möjliga orsaker och förklaringar till den, för att sedan kunna använda och föra vidare kunskapen om dessa framgångsstrategier i musikbranschen. Jag har använt mig av kvalitativa intervjuer med fallstudien som metod. Intervjuerna är gjorda i New York, USA och omfattar inflytelserika personer från musik-, konst- och modevärlden, med inriktning på vilka faktorer och personer som varit viktiga och avgörande för Lady Gagas karriär. Analysen är baserad på en teori om Lady Gagas strategier kallad 4E efter ledorden emotions (känslor), erfarenhet, engagemang och exklusivitet. Intervjuerna och fallstudien bekräftar 4E-teorin på alla fyra punkter. Analysen visar att två ytterligare viktiga faktorer är vikten av stödjande grupper runt en ny okänd artist och New Yorks mångfald av artister, musiker och konstnärer.