The limits of the story: transmedial influences on the WWE’s storytelling

January 19, 2019.Reading time 11 minutes.

Academic work on professional wrestling to date has explored the way in which storylines are intrinsically and unavoidably developed by both the creative team behind a promotion as well as its fans, as Katz Rizzo points out: Live professional wrestling is a performance in which creative power lies in between the performers and the fans. […]

‘Convivencia’ and the limitations of a macro lens

January 11, 2019.Reading time 8 minutes.

From the Libro de ajedrez, dados tables – Alfonso X; Biblioteca de la Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid Yes, I’m going back down the well-trodden path. Apologies in advance. Convivencia is probably the most contentious word in medieval Iberian studies. While debate around it and its usage has died down in recent […]

Professional wrestling studies: a survey of the discipline

November 24, 2018.Reading time 14 minutes.

The art created for Chris Jericho & Kevin Owens’ legendary yet surreal “festival of friendship”: Monday Night RAW, 13th February 2017 Firstly, a quick disclaimer: while medieval and early modern Hispanic studies remain my primary academic interests, my heart has for many years been and will continue to be taken by the unique art form […]

The politicised rewriting of Spain’s colonial history

November 7, 2018.Reading time 16 minutes.

Engraving by Thierry de Bry, 1590 (British Library) An article was published in The Guardian earlier this year which reports on Spain’s newly-created Fundación Civilización Hispánica , an historical organisation founded by a select all-male group of businessmen, politicians, writers, journalists and academics. The organisation has simultaneously emerged alongside a new book by Borja Cardelús, once Spain’s […]

Lope de Vega’s Muslims & the problem with “tópicos convencionales”

October 1, 2018.Reading time 10 minutes.

From Hadith Bayad (MS Arab. 368, Vatican Library) I recently read a relatively new dissertation written on sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish literature that depicts the Muslim, Moorish inhabitants of al-Andalus in the Middle Ages. In their analysis of one particular play, the author – unprompted and not quoting the original text – refers […]

Leaving the corporate world for academia

September 20, 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

Gracienne Taking Leave of Her Father the Sultan (detail), Lieven van Lathem, David Aubert, 1464. J. Paul Getty Museum When a student aspiring to a career in academia inevitably weighs up their life choices there is an abundance of opinions online attempting to help them make that decision (or, more often than not, to […]

Mission statement

August 10, 2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

Before properly embarking on this blog I’d like to outline what is at once a mission statement of sorts, and a disclaimer. In my very short years as an academic writer I’ve grown increasingly (and, at times, prohibitively) self-conscious. Self-conscious of how my own experiences, environment and personal relationships all in some way influence the […]