This week Senior Societies had talks and discussions from History Society, LGBTQIA+ Society and Philosophy Society, whilst Year 12 students attended a talk on University applications.
Based upon Katherine Pangonis’ ‘Queens of Jerusalem’, History Society’s session entitled ‘The Crusades: Gender and Cultural Diversity’ examined Queenship in the Crusader States, as well as female agency. One aspect that is absent from crusading history are Outremer’s female leaders, during the session students learnt about female rule, their roles in negotiation and diplomacy, as well as rebellion. They also studied cultural diversity within the Crusader states, looking at artwork such as the Melisende Psalter and considered how far cultural assimilation occurred in the East.
LGBTQIA+ Society heard a talk from Sefryn Penrose entitled, ‘Queering Heritage: finding and celebrating LGBTQ+ histories’. Sefryn Penrose is a consultant researcher and archaeologist of recent past. She has a background in heritage consultancy with Atkins, and is the author of assessment of Heritage at Risk from Environmental Threat, a major Historic England policy project, and Images of Change: an archaeology of England’s contemporary landscape (English Heritage). Sefryn was a research associate on the Diversity theme of the Heritage Futures research programme, based at University College London.
Philosophy Society welcomed Judith Butler for a talk entitled ‘Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism’. In this talk, Judith Butler discussed why debates on gender often overlook the presumption of monolingualism. They will consider the various response to gender, what it raises about dominant languages and what the resistance to gender might consist of. Judith argued that there can be no theory of gender without translation and that Anglophone monolingualism too often assumes that English forms a sufficient basis for theoretical claims about gender.
Finally, Year 12 Students attended a talk from Mr James-Williams, Mr Majithia and Miss Gibbs detailing how to apply for university as well as the support and guidance on offer from NLCS as they take the next step in their education careers.
