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The It-Narrative as Material Culture Methodology: Practical Applications for Historians
By Kerry Love (@kerrymlove) A popular novel format in the eighteenth century was the ‘it-narrative,’ or ‘novel of circulation,’ whereby the story was told by an inanimate object, such as a coin, quill or a coach, or an animal such as a pet dog, in first person. Their treatment in literary studies has been covered…
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Vampires, Ghosts, and Spirits on Santorini: The Affectivity of a Sulphuric Landscape
By Lavinia Gambini (@GambiniLavinia) Today known for its luxury tourism, high-end ‘destination weddings’, and romantic ‘Instagrammability’, Santorini was for seventeenth-century Westerners a ‘demonic’ island.[1] Early modern travellers to the Aegean encountered an unsettling landscape: they met a fragmented island torn into pieces by the many seismic and volcanic activities that had struck Santorini throughout…
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Striking Gold in the Archive: Goldsmiths’ Hall
By Kirsty Wright (@BeingKirst) Perhaps ironically in a year when access to archives has been restricted, my research shifted direction to examine the materiality of early modern records and record-keeping. In the summer when I was able to return to The National Archives, I spent some time sifting through different boxes for relevant material and…
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13. An Anatomical Atlas
By Fiona Knight (@fionalillian_) Upon first glance, these decorated woodcut initials may appear quite charming, featuring little working cherubs. But upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that they’re engaging in something a bit more macabre – bloodletting, the assemblage of a skeleton, the transportation of a corpse and the dissection of one. This is because…
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7. A Film Slide from the Cultural Revolution
By Ivi Fung Many will recognise immediately what is in the middle of the film slide – a portrait of the first Chairman of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao Zedong. The photograph was a material representation of Mao’s cult of personality at its height.
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