Dr. Andrew Dowling is a contemporary historian in the Hispanic Studies Department at Cardiff University, where he] has taught since 2002. His research focuses on 20th-century Catalan history and nationalism, including studies on pro-independence movements in democratic Spain. Dr. Andrew Dowling is the author of Catalonia: A New History (Routledge, 2022), winner of the Serra […]

Recent news reports about the relationship between conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and ultra-wealthy conservative activists such as billionaires Harlan Crow and the Koch brothers have revealed many interesting details and raised a number of questions, but one of the most peculiar aspects involves their attendance at the Bohemian Grove. Operated by the […]

The guest author for this post is Maryam Farahani, She is a Research Associate at the University of Liverpool and co-editor of Psycho-Literary Perspectives in Multimodal Contexts. During the long nineteenth century, Western Orientalists designed intimate portraits of the East, informed by new aesthetic principles. William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), for instance, painted a striking icon of Oriental romantic […]