In kindergarten I vividly remember sitting in a circle and listening as each student had the chance to tell the class who they would vote for in the 1988 US Presidential election. Of course I’m sure each of us relayed the candidate that our parents were voting for, but the reason I remember it so clearly is that this was a private Christian school (and therefore pretty religious and conservative) and shockingly, a student at the end of the circle said that he would vote for Dukakis. After hearing “Bush” so many times, the “Dukakis” made quite an impression.
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Last autumn we ran an experimental online public engagement series called 'earliest political memories'. We collected a total of 68 memories that were generously contributed by members of the public. You can read all the contributions here. The series caught the attention of our colleague Rachel O'Connell in the School of English who…
In "earliest political memories"
On Friday morning last week (24/07/2016) the UK woke up to the outcome of the referendum vote on EU membership. The blogosphere, social media and mainstream media are awash with attempts to make sense of what happened, as have my own conversations with others over the last three days. These 'furious' sense…
In "cultural work"
I think a belief in social justice (in my non-religious home) was always the moral backdrop of my upbringing. So my first political memories are of disruption to that taken-for-grantedness. In my mind they go together but actually they must be nearly a year apart. They relate to my teacher…
In "earliest political memories"