Magazine created by students of the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University.

Monthly archive

December 2017 - page 2

Labels and Beyond: On Queer Liminality and Fuzzy Edges of Identification

in Views

by Tereza Walsbergerová

As most societies still struggle to fully accept gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans people, new sexual and gender identities keep entering the discourse, filling the gaps in representation and aiming to secure a niche in the queer community. While on one hand, these “new” identification labels will perhaps in time lead to a wider variety of queer representation in the media, they also undoubtedly contribute to the fragmentation of the community itself. This article serves as both a general introduction to some of the labels that have recently recently started entering the mainstream as well as a focus on particular issues and controversies related to these identifications in the context of the queer community. Keep Reading

“During the time of my career, there have been some very extraordinary changes”: Interview with Her Excellency Barbara C. Richardson

in Interviews
Photo by Jiří Jež

By Makéta Šonková and Anna Formánková

Although not as much talked about as with the U.S. or the U.K., Canada, too, shares long-cultivated ties to our country, and these ties have been growing strong recently. Partly, it might be thanks to the charismatic Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, it might also be thanks to the new foreign trade agreement between Canada and the EU, the ongoing academic and personal interests of people in academia and historians – after all, our very Department of English and American Studies is a shining example of that – but it definitely is thanks to the charismatic and bold new ambassador to the Czech Republic, Her Excellency Barbara C. Richardson.

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American Presidential Crises

in Views

By Pavla Wernerová

While the president of the United States can be considered to be the most powerful person in the world, they are still not free to do anything they want. The president is still limited by many factors such as the Congress and the Supreme Court and even by such factors such as public opinion or the media. The role of the president is defined in the Constitution. In spite of that, there are many grey zones where the Constitution does not deal with the issue linked to the presidency in more details. Since crises related to the presidency were usually a result of the lack of specificity in the Constitution, they can be perceived as not only presidential but also constitutional crises. What are the different kinds of constitution crises? Are they any major differences between them? And what are the examples of the constitutional crises linked to the presidency in history and by what were they caused? Keep Reading

Public Sculpture and Nationalism: The Not-Only-Visual Re-Birth of Irish Identity

in Views
The Queen Victoria statue by John Hughes at its original location in Dublin, Ireland, date circa 1908 (photo source National Library of Ireland on The Commons, Flickr.com, no known copyright restrictions)

By Markéta Šonková

The summer of 2017 saw many upheavals. The U.S., too, experienced many. One of them was a public fight over the fate of Confederate statues and monuments. It was the white supremacists’ rally in Charlottesville, Va. which turned violent that renewed attention to these statues. Since then, they have been coming down across the U.S. Public monuments have an interesting role in any society – they represent a link to a nation’s memory and past. However, issues arise when the memory represented by the statues are omnipresent reminders of the grievances of the past. That has been the case not only with the U.S. in 2017, but in other times of national fragility or rebirth. Such as in Ireland at the turn of the 20th century. Keep Reading

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