City of Gold and Mud

My favorite visit that we have taken so far was actually our first trip to Trafalgar Square. I find it truly fascinating that we can stand in a place of such history and see the British history unfold before us. The display of military and imperial power within the square is ever present in the architecture and landscape. As seen in James Tissot’s London Visitors , the square is a highly popular tourist attraction, then and still now. His subjects stand between the grandiose Corinthian columns of the National Gallery and St. Martin’s stands tall in the background. Even today, it is clear to me that the Corinthian columns on the once controversial National Gallery are inherently replicating Greek militaristic and imperial power. Furthermore, the neo-classical architecture can be construed as a tribute to the Roman Empire, by which London (Londinium) was founded around 47 AD. Additionally, the erect memorial for Horatio Nelson in the center of the square promotes British naval capacit...

Amelia Moore Blog Post #1: Boat Ride on the Thames One of my favorite excursions that we have taken part in so far in the semester has been the boat ride on the Thames.   One of the most interesting aspects of the boat ride was that it was so directly comparable to the many of the readings and topics that we have discussed in class. Throughout the 19 th century, the Thames was incredibly polluted as it was utilized for transportation of goods as well as was a popular spot for industrial factories at the time. As a result, as is depicted in James Tissot’s painting “The Thames,” you can see the extent to which the Thames was in abhorrent conditions at the time. In the picture, one can see large columns of billowing smoke emanating out of the smoke stacks, as well as an incredible quantity of boats crowding the river. When comparing this picture to the modern day Thames, what struck me was ultimately how similar the two were. Although there are now stricter en...

On our class visit on February 26th, we traveled to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Admittedly, I found the museum equal parts terrifying and fascinating. The wax figures appeared to be so realistic that it was odd that they did not move or speak. At the same time, the figures served to make celebrities, characters and superheroes approachable. Many students and attendees were taking pictures of themselves with the figures, even though they knew they were not real. Obviously, I participated in these awkward selfies as seen above.  In the story we read for class, Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Watson are pressed with the task of solving a murder. Similar to the experience we had in the Sherlock Holmes exhibit, we were placed in the shoes of detectives and had to use clues to find the murderer as well as the famous missing detective.  In Doyle’s piece, he described the opium den. " Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic po...

Seeing an omnibus, and more widely the history of transportation in London, at the London Transit Museum has led me to think differently about the ways in which we move around the city. In the past, your form of transportation was an indicator of your socioeconomic status. In my experience, this is much less true today. While we hear a lot about how classist British society, you do not feel like that when you take the tube. There are people from all walks of life on any given tube ride, but everyone is still using the same form of public transportation and all that comes with it, including the smells, the shoving, the annoyance and the impatience. You can really see a sample of London when you take the tube. There are tourists and business people, mixed in with school groups and families and sometimes, if you’re lucky, a cute dog. In a time where transit was more separated by class, you would miss the experience of watching, or being a part of, a random group of people who are al...

Trafalgar Square was the first stop on the walking tour in week 2. Professor Marshall pointed out the Fourth Plinth, the unfinished pedestal in the Northwest corner of the historic square. Unfinished due to insufficient funds, this plinth has been empty since 1841 (Rosehill). There has been two different movements to occupy this bare object with temporary works of art in the last 20 years, with the most recent push going strong since 2005 (“ Latest Trafalgar Square” ). The piece we will observe for our study abroad experience is “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist” by Michael Rakowitz. Beneath the creation, there was a short summary of the artist and his work, a replica of the Iraqi Lamassu, which was destroyed in 2015 by ISIS ( “ Latest Trafalgar” ). Upon further research, Rakowitz called his recreation, made of 10,500 date syrup cans, as a "a ghost of the original, and as a placeholder for those human lives that cannot be reconstructed, that are still searching for...

One of the field trips that I found the most fascinating was the site visit to Madame Tussauds where we did the Sherlock Experience. It was so insane seeing the life-like creations of famous celebrities and movie characters. Although it was nerve-wracking because there were numerous times when I thought I ran into people but they were actually mannequins. The contrasting of the Madame Tussauds, Sherlock Experience, and “The Man with the Twisted Lip”  showed a London theme of rich London versus poor London.   Similar to the Sherlock Experience, the “The Man with the Twisted Lip” is filled with a Holmes journey featuring twists and turns that keeps the reader guessing the entire time. In addition, in the short story, Holmes and Watson try to figure out the disappearance or “murder” of Mr. St Clair like how we tried to find Holmes and the murderer during the Sherlock Experience. I think the museum and the short story serve as contrasts to each other because Madame Tussa...

Marie Aguirre Blog Post 1 The boat tour on the Thames gave me a new perspective of London and allowed me to understand the city more thoroughly. The view from the Thames also gave me insight into one of the themes we have studied throughout this course, the divide of classes. In our journey on the river, I had a unique encounter similar to the experiences that Charles Dickens discussed in his works about the neighborhoods of London. We were on the back of the boat and were taking pictures of the scenery when the dockmen approached us and gruffly told us to stand away from the edge. This happened again when they then made it clear where we weren’t allowed to cross. The manner of the men mimics the gruff and coarseness of the men who worked by the river in Dickens’ time and shows that despite the passage of time, there are still similarities in the people who work by the river. The Vauxhall Bridge in this picture serves a double purpose as it both literally and figuratively con...

I found the uncanny, life-like appearance of the wax figures at Madame Tussauds wax museum particularly intriguing and disturbing. In one instance, I was standing in the room with the film celebrities and I saw a woman taking a photo of a wax celebrity. The shot she was trying to take was blocking my path, so I politely waited to the side so she could take the photo. I was waiting for nearly a minute and was beginning to get annoyed, so I made the conscious decision to walk through her shot. And, in this moment, my heart dropped as I realized I had been waiting patiently for a wax statue, not a ‘she’, to take a photo that would never be. This was one of the many eerie experiences I had in Madame Tussauds that made me think of the piece we read for the visit, The Man with the Twisted Lip , by Arthur Conan Doyle, and the theme of ‘Monstrous London’.                    One specific line in Doyle’s piece came to mind as I...