The first pilot to my Essay Tips series! I share my method for reading and understanding a journal article or paper quickly and efficiently including how to take good, concise notes and remember useful citations.
Arthur Miller uses the past and present to incredible dramatic effect in Death of a Salesman, All My Sons and many of his other plays. Think about how to use these skills in your own writing by learning from the master.
Welcome to the fifth of my PhD vlogs. Follow my week as a PhD Student in Theatre and Drama at the University of Exeter. Thesis writing, research meetings and field work. As well as a couple of theatre workshops and rehearsals.
My second essay tips video. Conducting a comprehensive literature review is an important part of any research project. Here are my tips for how to use Google Scholar effectively to quickly and easily find the academic papers, journal articles or books you need to write that essay or complete that dissertation.
Ibsen's A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People both engage with politics in intelligent and mature ways, avoiding agitprop-style polemicism and overt persuasion.
I started my PhD a little over six months ago and wanted to share some of the lessons I've learnt from that experience so far in order to allow anyone who may be starting a research degree, masters or undergraduate course might be able to get a headstart and learn from my mistakes!
In Blasted, 4.48 Psychosis and Cleansed, Sarah Kane uses extreme imagery within her stage plays. In analysing the deep meaning of her work, however, there is far more subtlety in both theme and her use of Derrida's concept of deconstruction.
The Royal Shakespeare Company was, last week, host to Richard Bean's new play The Hypocrite, co-produced with Hull Truck Theatre as part of Hull City of Culture 2017. Directed by Phillip Breen, the play starred Mark Addy and Caroline Quentin in the lead roles.
Some tips for how to conduct interdisciplinary research at PhD, MA or undergraduate degree level. Including how to approach reading papers from a completely new research field, methodology or discipline.
A brief introduction to postdramatic and postmodern theatre as first theorised by Hans Theis Lehmann. The first in a series in which I briefly (and, hopefully, accessibly) introduce some core academic concepts and ideas.
Ask most people what they think of when they think of theatre and they'll probably point you towards Les Miserables, Wicked, The Lion King or Hamilton. In other words, musicals. But these aren't just musicals, these are megamusicals.
I recently saw Marianne Elliott's production of Angels in America by Tony Kushner as part of the NTLive broadcast from the National Theatre. Both Part One: Millenium Approaches and Part Two: Perestroika totally captivated me and, as such, I wanted to do a video essay reflecting on it.
Essay Tips is a new series I'm going to be putting out every so often packed with academic essay writing tips and research advice. In this first episode, I look at how to start an essay with a hook. How can you grab your reader and make them pay attention to your essay?
In this introduction to Gramsci and his neomarxist theory of hegemony, in particular cultural hegemony, I explore this concept which has been hugely influential in contemporary social theory, political theory and cultural theory.
Using my own PhD Application and Research Proposal as an example, I explore how to write a research proposal including structure, context, methodology and compiling an indicative bibliography.
Follow a day in the life of a PhD Student as I begin my week of PhD vlogs. My aim is to record one video from Monday to Friday this week, releasing them two days later (Wednesday - Sunday) to give you a full insight into a week as a PhD student and a broader look at postgrad PhD student life in general.
In which I try to understand some weird academic books and struggle with the isolation of working from home.
Day Three! In which I struggle to understand de Certeau and his masterwork The Practice of Everyday Life, pop to the public library and go for a run!
Day four! In which I take a tiny break from PhD life to think about writing scripts and, more specifically, writing my next play.
The last in my week of daily phd student vlogs in which I go to what must be one of the coolest libraries in the world and make a breakthrough in understanding some tough theory.
This week, a combination of theatre vlog and PhD vlog as I pick out my top 5 theatre books for theatre students, theatre nerds and anyone with an interest in drama who wishes to develop a better understanding of theatre and get ahead in their drama class at university, drama school or elsewhere.
Although originating in the dramatic theatre or narrative theatre, dramaturgy is an increasingly useful notion for describing the affective journey an audience goes on while watching a play or performance.
Often it would be easier to have complex theories simply explained to us. But we don't always have that choice. In this episode of Essay Tips I elaborate on some methods for understanding complex theory and theories in the Humanities.
In today's What the Theory?, I take a look social class looking at both Karl Marx's theory of class as well as Pierre Bourdieu, cultural capital and more societally rooted approaches to class in the twenty-first century.
I've been preparing for PhD upgrade process recently as well as having my new play performed in Exeter which is why I've been a little slow at uploading stuff.
In this episode of What the Theory, an introduction to semiotics, in particular the approaches of linguists and semioticians Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce.
Want to improve your paragraph structure for academic writing? In this video, I suggest 5 tips for writing paragraphs that will make your essay concise, clear and easy to read.
Roland Barthes' From Work to Text is a seminal essay which lays out why, in the humanities, we have come to refer to pieces of literature, films and many other things using the catch-all term "text". Because, we refer a lot to reading a text or interpreting a text. But what do we mean when talk about a literary text? The use of the term text in English Literature and literary studies might seem fairly straight-forward, but, across the wider humanities, we also often hear references to artistic texts, filmic texts and performance texts.
In this latest episode of Essay Tips, I take a look at how to find citations and references for essays and assignments, particularly at undergraduate level. Looking back at my video on using Google Scholar, I thought it worth putting together a more entry-level video with help for bibliography preparation.
In this latest episode of What the Theory? I take a look at phenomenology, time and dasein (Heidegger's concept of consciousness) through the example of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, the narrative of which is incredibly playful with how human beings experience time and consciousness.
In February and March 2018, UK university students will face significant disruption due to strike action taken by the University and College Union (UCU). I wanted to do a quick PhD vlog which gives a little bit of an insight into why I am striking as well as the potential damage that the current USS pensions dispute could cause to university education in the UK.
Modernism; it can be confusing. So, in today's What The Theory? I wanted to provide something of a modernism crash course. We'll be looking at many different forms of modernist art as well as a tiny bit of modernist architecture and modernist literature.
Last week, the BBC broadcast the 2017 Almeida Theatre production of Hamlet on BBC Two. Directed by Robert Icke and with Andrew Scott in the title role, this production of perhaps Shakespeare's most famous play does more than simply apply a filter to the text but, instead, carries out some deep interventions into the narrative of Hamlet.
What is postmodernism? This is certainly my most requested What the Theory? video yet. In it, I hope to provide an introduction to postmodernist theory and postmodernist philosophy. Along the way, we'll look at simulacra and Baudrillard's concepts of a simulacrum and hyperreality as well as Wittengenstein's concept of language-games.
In this latest episode of What The Theory?, I hope to provide an introduction to Marxism, culture and Marxist Literary Criticism and Theory. We're going to begin with the economic theories of Marx and Engels, particularly their base and superstructure approach to analysing societal structures. We'll then continue by looking at how these have informed a Marxist approach to literary theory but also how we can transpose these ideas into a wider Marxist cultural theory.
For the first "proper" episode of my Politix series, we're diving in to Tina Fey's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Aziz Ansari's Master of None in order to explore how each show represents Millennials, or the Millennial generation.
I've recently been putting the ideas from Deep Work by Cal Newport into practice in order to get a better PhD work life balance. Having just moved house, things have been a little hectic and, thus, productivity has taken a bit of a hit.
In this month's episode of What the Theory?, we take a look at colonialism and imperialism. More specifically we look at the politics of colonialism and the appearance of colonialist ideology in culture.
With BoJack Horseman Season Five being released on Netflix a week and a bit ago, I thought I’d add to the avalanche of BoJack Horseman analysis videos already on YouTube by tackling how the series critiques our relationship with the recent past.
With the new academic year just underway, I wanted to collate together what I think are the top 5 apps for PhD students or, indeed, anyone undertaking a postgraduate course of study.
In this month's episode of What the Theory?, we're diving into postcolonialism with an intro to postcolonial theory in literature, film and culture.
In this month's episode of What the Theory?, we're looking at Cultural Materialism, an approach to understanding culture developed by Raymond Williams. Foundational to cultural studies, cultural materialism (a close relation to new historicism), draws influence from both Marxist Literary Criticism and Liberal Humanism in order to develop a "sociology of culture".
In this video, I look at how to write an abstract for a research paper with examples drawn from my own experience as a PhD Student. Writing an abstract can be tough, knowing what to include in an abstract and what to leave out when trying to summarise your conference paper or journal article in such a short amount of space can be particularly frustrating as these few hundred words will be what represents your work to conference organisers or potential readers.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is the first interactive movie (certainly the first live action interactive movie) in some time to have achieved both popular and critical success.
The Poetics by Aristotle is one of the earliest works of literary theory or dramatic theory. Composed between 330 and 350BC, Aristotle's Poetics is a treatise on Greek Tragedy and theatre which examines how the narrative structure of Greek plays such as the Oresteia by Aeschylus or Oedipus Rex by Sophocles brings about catharsis (or katharsis) in an audience.
Need The Society of the Spectacle explained? Well, in this episode of What the Theory?, we’re doing just that.
Reading classic books can often seem daunting. Classic literature books within the English Literature canon come with a fair amount of cultural baggage and, because of this, many people are put off reading classics. Yet, since I've started trying to read more classics, I've been really enjoying the works of George Eliot, James Joyce, Charles Dickens and others.
Fuelled by my impatience for the release of The Good Place Season 4, today’s episode of Politix takes a look at the moral philosophy of The Good Place (created by Michael Schur for NBC) in order to consider what the show might reveal about classism in contemporary society and our tendency to conflate morality and class.
Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author is a seminal text in the development of literary theory. Often considered the moment when structuralism gave way to poststructuralism as the dominant approach to cultural analysis, in The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes argues not only that we should not place too much emphasis on authorial intent when analysing a cultural text but also that the popular conception of the act of authorship might be altogether wrong.
James Joyce’s Ulysses is perhaps the definitive example of literary modernism. And, despite its reputation as one of the most difficult books to read in all of English Literature, Ulysses by James Joyce—a retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey set in 1910s Dublin, Ireland and featuring such unforgettable characters as Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus (of A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man) and Molly Bloom) can be an incredibly engaging and rewarding read.
In my previous video on the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, I focussed on creating a summary of the Society of the Spectacle, explained in a fairly general sense, particularly placing within the context of the Situationist International, May 1968 and Debord's wider work on situationism.
As promised: a Q&A! I was gonna wait to put this out until reaching 15,000 subs but, ever keen to keep to schedule, it's going out a few days before. So let's just pretend, okay?
In this introduction to Foucault, we consider the relationship between knowledge and power through looking (primarily) at three books by Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, The Order of Things and The History of Sexuality (as well as, very briefly, History of Madness—sometimes published as Madness and Civilisation—and The Birth of the Clinic).
Black Mirror Season 5 was released just a couple of weeks ago and Striking Vipers, starring Anthony Mackie, kicks things off with style (and the following episodes, Smithereens and Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, weren't too bad either). Having made a couple of Black Mirror analysis videos in the past, I thought I'd put some of the concepts surrounding queer theory, sexuality, gender and masculinity that we've begun to take a look at in my What the Theory? series into practice in unpacking this new episode and exploring the politics of new Black Mirror.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (recently the subject of a television adaptation with George Clooney in the role of the ruthlessly ambitious Colonel Cathcart for US streaming service Hulu) is one of the classic books of the twentieth century. In this Catch 22 summary and analysis video, I take you through a book report which outlines some of the background and context surrounding the book (and its author Joseph Heller) as well as discussing its style and (without spoilers) providing a brief plot summary.
Structuralism is a form of literary theory which, inspired by semiotics and the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, emerged in France in the 1950s. In this week’s episode of What the Theory?, we take a look at how structuralism and structuralist theory enable us to identify the underlying structures which inform how literature, film, performance, visual art and all other forms of cultural text are created and read.
As my Society of the Spectacle videos have been so well received, I thought I'd try out a slightly more overtly political video, putting ideas such as episteme (explored in my What the Theory video on Michel Foucault), Spectacle and Capitalist Realism (a concept developed by Mark Fisher and discussed in my second video on Guy Debord).
Neoliberalism (or neoliberal capitalism) is a term which gets thrown around a lot in cultural and political discourse. Is it often used to describe the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent premierships of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and the adjective "neoliberal" continues to be used as a derogatory phrase in the ongoing Democratic debates in the US. Yet it is also used with reference to the "gig economy" and services such as Uber, Deliveroo and Airbnb.
Copyright and Intellectual Property are issues that have prompted a number of controversies recently. The Dark Horse vs Joyful Noise court case in which Katy Perry was found to have infringed on the intellectual property rights of Christian rap artists Flame, for instance, recently provoked a great deal of astonishment online (and inspired a fantastic video by musicologist Adam Neely on the flaw in copyright law as it currently applies to music). Beyond this, the "fair use" or "fair dealing" doctrines which essentially allow for legal copyright infringement for the purposes of parody, commentary and critique regularly draw the frustrations of YouTube creators hit with a copyright claim (see, for instance, Nintendo's copyright policy which, until it was recently changed, was seen as somewhat draconian).
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord has been drawn upon frequently in recent years, particularly as a way of explaining the politics of Donald Trump. As “fake news” and “alternative facts” have dominated our political discourse, many have sought to see whether Debord’s concept of the spectacle and his other situationist writings might offer some insight into a world which has seemed to have lost sight of what is real and what is not.
Derrida, deconstruction and poststructuralism can all be sources of much confusion. In today’s episode of What the Theory?, I provide an overview of poststructuralism including the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Judith Butler and other key figures in poststructuralist theory.
It’s been a few months since my 15,000 subs Q&A and, as I enjoyed it so much, I thought I’d make a follow-up! Packed with questions from subscribers and patrons on topics including semio-capitalism, Jean Baudrillard, poststructuralism, art, politics and some reflections on my PhD.
Unlike most developments in the employment market, the Gig Economy has received a great deal of press attention and established itself firmly as a point of reference in the popular consciousness. In recent years, increasing numbers of people have turned to services such as Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, Just Eat, TaskRabbit and Fiverr as either a side hustle or their main source of income.
Greta Gerwig's 2019 adaptation of Little Women is an engaging interpretation of the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott.
The Frankfurt School get mentioned a lot on this website. Alongside being celebrated for their contributions to philosophy, sociology and political science, however, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and the various other scholars who worked at what was (and is) officially known as the Institute for Social Research, are the target of a lot of vitriol.
Sex Education Season Two landed on Netflix recently. The show, which follows teenager Otis Milburn (played by Asa Butterfield) as he sets up a clandestine sex therapy clinic in his high school has been a hit both in the UK and the US. But the show's aesthetic, which borrows heavily from the high school comedies of John Hughes (such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club), has caused some confusion. Faced with English accents yet American-style lockers, jackets and landscapes, many of the show's viewers have found themselves asking: where is Sex Education set?
Academic books and journal articles can be pretty boring. Academic writing is often highly complex, uses lengthy sentences and endless amounts of specialist terminology.
Developed by the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis argues that the human mind contains within it three opposing forces, the superego, the ego and the id. Through the interpretation of dreams, Freud believed that we could access repressed thoughts, feelings and traumas which we like to think we have purged ourselves of but which, in fact, remain in our unconscious mind.
A lot has been said and written about the politics of Harry Potter in recent years. Comparisons between Donald Trump and Voldemort, for instance, have become somewhat tiresome. In these attempts to draw on the wizarding world of Harry Potter as a lens through which to view contemporary politics, however, the actual political commentary which exists in the series by JK Rowling (particularly following The Order of the Phoenix) gets lost a little.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has well and truly captured the zeitgeist. In a world of lockdown, quarantine and shelter-in-place, Tom Nook, Isabelle, Timmy and Tommy, the Able Sisters and whatever neighbours you've managed to attract to your island have, if you're anything like me, provided an important escape.
An introduction to Whiteness, Race, and White Privilege.
An introduction to The Authoritarian Personality study.
A video about Elon Musk and the future.
A video about mainstream media bias.
A history and analysis of the Culture Wars.
A video about the artform known as shitposting.
For decades, politicians have asked us to put our faith in "trickle-down" economics, telling us that tax cuts for the super rich encourage economic growth and job creation.
A video about Cancel Culture and "mobs".
A story about Johnny Harris, propaganda and misinformation on YouTube.
A video about Jordan Peterson, George Orwell and the dystopian world of 1984.
A video about countries, maps and borders; where they came from and where they might be going in the future.
A video about Logan Paul, Jake Paul, YouTube boxing and the pursuit of redemption.
A video about Veritasium, Science YouTube, misinformation and Why You Should Want Driverless Cars On Roads Now (or maybe not).
A video about The Metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the future of capitalism.
A video about COVID-19 vaccines, variants and Big Pharma profiteering.
A video about how billionaire-funded right-wing “think tanks” such as the Heritage Foundation, Adam Smith Institute, Manhattan Institute and Institute of Economic Affairs manipulate the news to spread their propaganda.
In this month’s video, we’re looking at why Elon Musk’s attempted (and now seemingly aborted) purchase of Twitter.