2015 was the first time Christ’s College, Cambridge has held an essay competition, providing five titles for candidates to choose from. Alice Park (N) won one of the five first prizes (£100) for her essay, ‘Do acts of public commemoration distort historical understanding?', which was awarded at the Christ's open day in February. With much emphasis being placed upon the commemoration of the First World War, Alice was keen to acknowledge this but also widen her research, and looked at how commemoration had evolved over the last 300 hundred years.
She looked at how religious, political and cultural changes have shaped public commemoration, invoking a personal and emotional response which has served to risk fostering partial truths and over emphasise certain aspects of a conflict, thus distorting historical understanding. The research allowed her to look at well-known events from new perspectives, and at a time when there has never been more media coverage in the world, assess whether this detracts from the true messages behind the events being commemorated.
Olivia Collier (N) was highly commended for her essay submitted to the Girton College Humanities Writing Competition, ‘The Processes and Motives Behind Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummification and Girton College’s Mummified Crocodile.’ Inspired by Girton College’s mummified crocodile in the prestigious Lawrence Artifact Room, Olivia explored the traditions of mummification.
The essay included an explanation of the wide spectrum of Egyptian mummification, including mummies from the previous exhibition at The British Museum, and also the extraordinary reasons for why and how the Egyptians went to such an extent to preserve animals, such as the holy Apis Bull and crocodiles similar to the one in the Lawrence Room at Girton College.
MPH von Habsburg