STAAR Spark Reviews

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The content of St Anne’s Academic Review is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and adapt, transform, and build upon it, provided you give appropriate credit to the author and indicate if changes were made.

SPARK Reviews:
Spark Reviews are short 1500-3000-word reviews of any art form or critical text. Reviews might explore books, films, Television series, exhibitions, theatre performances, music etc. Take your own direction and style with a review and see your writing published online in the St. Anne’s Academic Journal.

To submit a Spark Review, please email a brief abstract to Daniel Mercieca, Editor of Spark Reviews, at danielmercieca@hotmail.co.uk. Deadlines are scheduled on an individual basis to fit around academic/professional work and are very flexible. All reviews will appear online, and a selection will appear in the 2020 print edition of STAAR (Volume 10).

Spark Reviews are open to current students and alumni of St. Anne’s College.

Firework Competition:
To brighten-up days during the covid-19 quarantine period, STAAR have launched a Firework Competition with a £50 prize for the most original Spark Review. The £50 prize will be awarded to a review which demonstrates: creative thinking, evaluation, stylistic flare, penetrating and personal engagement with an art form/critical text, originality, sharp analysis, strong argumentation, and sound research. Please email submissions abstracts to the Spark Reviews Editor, Daniel Mercieca at danielmercieca@hotmail.co.uk.

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2020 Firework Competition is Andreea Scridon for her review of Rudolf Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet livestreamed from Sadler’s Wells Theatre.

Sentinels Aloft: An Indifference of Birds Book Review

by Vicki Lee
MSt. in English Literature
16 August 2020

A Socially-Distanced Romeo and Juliet Ballet at Sadler’s Wells

by Andreea Scridon
MSt. in Creative Writing
21 June 2020

Winner of the 2020 Firework Competition


Because of This, Too, I Loved: A Review of Danez Smith’s homie

by Caroline King
MSt. in Creative Writing
25 May 2020

Satire on Steroids in Autumn de Wilde’s Emma

by Elena Porter
Faculty of History
22 March 2020

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Silence: Sound, Silence, and War in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life

by Joel Casey
Faculty of English
15 March 2020

AMALGAM: Theaster Gates, Liverpool, and Monumentality

by Siân Round
MSt. in English and American Studies
15 March 2020

Why We Sleep: it is high time we slept deeper in order to dream bigger

by Virginia Casablancas Antras
Department of Chemistry
12 October 2019

From Barbecues to By-elections: Feeling through the Future in Russell T. Davies’ Years and Years

by Michael Bicarregui
MSt. in Film Aesthethics
30 August 2019

The Language of Power: Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018)

by James Dobbyn
MSt. in Creative Writing
10 April 2019

The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl & Dana Mackenzie.
A book about how we ask questions and how to ask (and solve) better questions

by Adrian Soto-Mota
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics
19 March 2019

‘It is fun to be Queen sometimes’: The competitive sport of winning royal favour

Sharp and witty, Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (2018) is a darkly humorous study in spinelessness.
by Muhammad Babar Suleman
1st Year practice-led Dphil in Fine Art
27 February 2019

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to Contact Us.

The Spark Reviews section of STAAR was founded by Daniel Mercieca in 2018.

St Anne's Academic Review (STAAR)
A publication by St Anne's College Middle Common Room
ISSN 2048-2566 (Online)  ISSN 2515-6527 (Print)

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