Making Short Politics Placements Work

Short placements can provide an important and meaningful experience of politics in action for students who are unable to benefit from the generally lengthy placements currently on offer. This article is based on the findings of the three-year HEFCE-funded project The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics and explores the potential of short, local, research-based placements, which are embedded in modules, supported by online journaling and effectively assessed, to enrich students' understanding of politics and enhance their employability.     

Medieval women

Sabina Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179: a Visionary Life, (Routledge), London, 1989; Jacques Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, Translated by Lydia Cochrane, (Basil Blackwell), Oxford, 1988.     

UK parliamentary perspectives on Europe 1971–93

The controversy over UK membership of the European Union shows no sign of abating, even though 20 years have passed since the unprecedented referendum which was supposed to settle the issue. The political and constitutional implications of UK membership are such that growing scholarly interest in the subject is quite understandable. One aspect of the question which awaits proper investigation, however, is the quality of public debate. This neglect is surprising, given regular opinion‐poll findings that the UK electorate feels ill‐informed about Europe and looks to its politicians to remedy the deficiency. This study, which uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse five key parliamentary discussions of the European issue, reveals a marked deterioration in the factual accuracy of contributions by MPs. It offers some possible explanations of this trend, and suggests how this kind of research might be developed further.     

Orientalist Sociology and the Creation of Colonial Sexualities

In what Arjun Appadurai has dubbed the ‘colonial imaginary’ issues of femininity, and who possessed it, were of prime importance. An orientalizing sociology sought to distinguish, and indeed to fix, differences between metropolitan and indigenous women as a rhetoric of hierarchy which secured proper and western femininity to white women. One critical route which colonial commentators and authorities took to produce that knowledge was to measure women's proximity to the practice of prostitution, a means which permitted discussion and judgement of racialized sexualities as well as of proper models of feminine behaviour. This article will explore the ways in which the new sociology of the Victorian period, wielded in a colonial context, served to separate women through race-based ideas of sexual behaviour and sexual order. It will deal with British India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

Work,love and politics: Recent studies of nineteenth‐century British women

Olive Banks, Becoming a Feminist. The Social Origins of ‘First Wave’ Feminism (Wheatsheaf) Brighton, 1986; Barbara Caine, Destined To Be Wives. The Sisters of Beatrice Webb (Clarendon) Oxford, 1986; Sandra Stanley Holton, Feminism and Democracy. Women's Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge University Press) New York, 1986; Pat Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics 1860–1914 (Clarendon) Oxford, 1986; Sylvia Walby, Patriarchy at Work. Patriarchal and Capitalist Relations in Employment (Polity) Cambridge, 1986.