Studying with The Simpsons
QUESTION There is a University of Tennessee course on Dolly Parton. What other odd university courses are there? The University of California, Berkeley, has offered a Simpsons And Philosophy course since 2003. Its purpose is to offer an introductory look into philosophy, ‘provided in a uniquely fun and engaging way through The Simpsons’.
A course that received a great deal of attention was Politicising Beyonce, offered by Rutgers University in New Jersey in 2010. It offered a study of the ‘Independent Woman’ as part of the Department of Women’s And Gender Studies. Students were encouraged to interrogate the treatment of black women through Beyonce’s music. The course was cancelled in 2015.
harry Potter And The Age Of Illusion is offered at Durham University: its aim is to place harry Potter in a social, cultural and educational context. Lessons include ‘Gryffindor and Slytherin: prejudice and intolerance in the classroom’.
The University of Virginia offers a Game Of Thrones module. Topics include racialism, fan-fiction, gender roles and power, identity formation and cultural allegory. For their final assignment, students are tasked with creating their own addition to the Game Of Thrones saga.
The University of Missouri’s english department offers a module studying rappers Kanye West and Jay-Z.
According to instructor Andrew hoberek ‘these guys are warming up to the level of poets . . . They’re much like painters and novelists in the 20th century, moving beyond the confines of the art form’s boundaries.’
Rich Lowe, Kidderminster, Worcs.
QUESTION How different do animals or plants have to be before they are considered a different species?
BIOLOGISTS and palaeontologists use species concepts that separate species from one another and also identify new ones. A common starting point is that a species is an interbreeding population. There are, however, grey areas, such as generally recognised species that can cross- breed with other species, for example lions and tigers, or fossils defined as species for which we have no idea whether they interbred or not.
Aside from sexual characteristics, morphology, behaviour, genetics or evolutionary history are taken into account. For example, many palaeontologists use the length of the femur, the thigh bone, to distinguish species.
This can lead to disagreement with which definition is best for a given species or how much difference is required to identify a separate species.
The idea of differentiation is one of convenience and practical use. There shouldn’t be a definitive dividing line between species, as the process of splitting is a gradual one.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.
QUESTION Were the Tudor monarchs known as such during their reign?
The Tudors began as a family of gentry in Caernarfonshire and Anglesey whose fortunes rose when henry V’s French widow, Catherine of Valois, married Owen ap Maredudd ap Tudor of Wales, her clerk of the wardrobe. At some point, a scribe recorded his name as Owen Tudor.
The couple secretly wed in the early 1430s. Owen Tudor was executed after the Yorkist victory at Mortimer’s Cross (1461) during the Wars of the Roses, dynastic conflicts between the house of York and house of Lancaster. however, his son edmund (1430-1456), earl of Richmond, married Margaret Beaufort, and their son henry, later henry VII, was thus a descendant, through the previously illegitimate maternal line, of the house of Lancaster.
It was this tenuous link with the Lancasters that made the Tudors a ruling dynasty, beginning in 1485 with henry’s victory at Bosworth Field and ending when elizabeth I died in 1603.
But it would have been unwise to call any of the monarchs Tudors during their reigns as it acknowledged their Welsh heritage.
henry VII liked to claim descent from the legendary King Arthur — he named his eldest son Arthur — but his real claim to the throne of england was slender and not something he was proud of. he used his grandfather’s surname and styled himself the earl of Richmond.
Owen Tudor’s tomb was discreetly swept away in the Dissolution of the Monasteries under henry VIII, for he, too, was ashamed of the name. None of henry’s children — edward VI, Mary I or elizabeth I — would be referred to as Tudors during their reigns.
The name Tudor was barely used in any documents for more than a century afterwards. historians have found only one poem on the accession of elizabeth’s closest relative, James I, recognising the transition from Tudor to Stuart.
It’s been suggested that the idea of a distinct Tudor period of history was established by the Scottish historian and philosopher David hume (1711-1776), who devoted an entire volume of his history Of england to the Tudors.
hume disdained the popular Whiggish reading of the english past, writing instead a history of politics that was ‘willing to offend everyone’. he rejected the idea of an ancient constitution in england, as well as the legitimacy of the divine right of kings, dismissing both of the political philosophies that dominated the english Civil War. For hume, the Tudors and Stuarts were all tyrants.
his book was controversial, but a bestseller, and as time went on, Tudor monarchy became a convenient term when discussing english history.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
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