History and Classics PhD thesis collection
Recent Submissions
-
Becoming a god in Greek thought
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-09-06)This thesis seeks to conceptualise the literary universe in ancient Greek literature as a ‘cosmic society’ and thereby to examine the defining features of gods and humans and how excellent human individuals might achieve ... -
Domestic medicine in Early Modern Scotland, c. 1650 – c. 1750
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-08-22)This thesis examines Scottish domestic medicine in the century between 1650 and 1750. Much has been written about household medicine in the English context, but only a handful of scholars have dealt with the concept in ... -
Epic in uncharted waters: the genres of Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-08-16)This thesis explores the generic identity of the Argonautica of the Hellenistic poet Apollonius Rhodius. The strong similarities between the Argonautica and Homeric poetry in terms of language, structure and content ... -
Commemorating the Battle of Waterloo in Great Britain,1815-1852
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-06-22)This thesis analyses the range of practices that developed to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo in nineteenth-century Britain. It examines the role of material culture in these acts of remembrance and compares how ... -
Stone and the built landscape on Roman Cyprus: case studies of Kourion and Amathus
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-07-11)The study of stone and built landscape in Roman cities is an emerging field which is currently expanding through the surge of new interest. Cyprus is one of the regions of the eastern Mediterranean that has been ... -
Political commitment of Eric Hobsbawm: the passion for communist politics in a transformed world (1978-2012)
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-06-15)The 1970s were a decade of transition on the European Left, characterised by intellectual ferment and ideological diversity. For Western European communists specifically, the 1970s saw the emergence of Eurocommunism, ... -
Becoming argonauts: Scots in the California Gold Rush, 1848-1860
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-05-17)This thesis examines the Scottish experience in the California Gold Rush through the lens of the Scottish diaspora. From 1848 to 1860, at least 3,000 Scots from across Scotland and its wider diaspora funnelled into the ... -
Material culture of Scottish reform politics, 1820-1884
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-04-26)Material culture is an underused source base for the analysis of nineteenth-century mass politics. While much has been written on the speeches of political leaders, the arguments on newspaper pages, and the memoirs of ... -
Learning and power: a cultural history of education in Late Antique Gaul
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-11-26)[No Deposit Agreement] -
Conflict and authority in the eleventh-century Anglo-Norman Church: a case study of Lanfranc of Caterbury (c.1010-1089)
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-04-25)This thesis examines the relationship between conflict and authority in the Middle Ages by exploring how Lanfranc of Canterbury managed conflicts during his career and how his authority was changed by those processes. ... -
'It was greatly feared that the queen was barren': perceptions and management of royal fertility in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England and Scotland
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-04-04)Scholars of kingship and queenship have long acknowledged that producing an heir was an expected duty for medieval queens and kings. Indeed, motherhood has been a focal point in medieval queenship scholarship since the ... -
Beyond the grave: the funerary landscapes of the Italian peninsula, ca. 1-700 CE
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-03-24)Much of our understanding of the funerary archaeology of Roman, late antique, and early medieval Italy is based upon a restricted number of case study sites. Where regional syntheses have been undertaken, these typically ... -
'Most Roman of the Romanists': Thomas Jefferson's classical taste, 1768-1826
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-03-18)This thesis is about Thomas Jefferson and his classical taste in architecture, ornamented gardens and the locus amoenus. Thomas Jefferson curated a classical world in Virginia, for himself and later for others. He created ... -
Political thought of Friedrich von Gentz, 1800-1812
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-03-01)This thesis focuses on the political writings of Friedrich von Gentz, a German writer and political advisor, between the years 1800 and 1812. Scholarship has tended to focus on the years 17911801 and Gentz’s political ... -
Clash of colour: a dialogue on race, caste, and class in the United States and India (1893-1954)
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-02-22)This dissertation examines the relationship between Indian independence activists, Indian anti-caste advocates, and black American civil rights activists between Swami Vivekananda’s first visit to the United States in ... -
Aspect's of Irish immigration into two Scottish towns (Dundee and Paisley) during the mid-nineteenth century
(The University of Edinburgh, 1978)The Paisley in the mid-nineteenth century is discussed in terms of the patterns of living which the immigrants adopted in aspects of migration analysis and also the background of Irish immigration to Great Britain during ... -
Earning the fruits of honour: a study of social mobility among the freeborn sub-elite in the Roman West
(The University of Edinburgh, 2021-11-29)This thesis examines the extent of, and attitude toward, upward social mobility among the sub-elite, freeborn, urban population of the Roman west during the first two centuries AD. ‘Upward social mobility’ is defined ... -
Radical Left and the Scottish Nation: print-cultures of left-wing nationalism, 1967-1983
(The University of Edinburgh, 2021-12-04)This thesis examines the origins of the discourse of ‘Radical Scotland’, which presumes a significant link between radicalism and Scottish nationhood. It identifies the origins of this discourse in the period 1967-1983, ... -
Settlements and economy in Britain during the first millennium B.C.
(The University of Edinburgh, 1970)•....Celtic Britain retained an archaism of tradition in that fundamental element of human culture, the home, (Piggott, 1965, 236). In writing those words, Piggott was referring to one specific artefact, the house-type, ... -
Sole rule and the Greek polis: legitimising monocratic power from the Archaic Period to the Early Hellenistic Period
(The University of Edinburgh, 2021-12-04)My thesis investigates the discourse of sole rule in the Greek polis from the Archaic Period to the Early Hellenistic Period. In particular, the thesis analyses how sole rulers were able to legitimise their position ...
