Long Histories

Karen.Hall — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:17:00 GMT

In my conferencing week, I attended AVSA and ANZAMEMS: from medieval and early modern studies in Adelaide to Victorian studies in Perth. It isn't the world's most obvious cross-over (I've heard of this thing - the eighteenth century - that might sit in the middle), and timing-wise, it wasn't easy. The conferences ran at basically the same dates, so I left ANZAMEMS early and only had a day at AVSA.

As a result of this conference juggling, I've been reflecting on long histories and the crossing of temporal boundaries. Long histories, which range over traditional boundaries of periodisation and attempt to unsettle such markers, offer a rich mode of engagement with the past: they require an engagement with historicism and historiography. To research, think and argue in terms of long histories not only requires a deep and sustained knowledge of the past, it also needs a critical awareness of the terms on which we frame and study these pasts. This can produce complex and innovative research as well as highly competent researchers.

Nonetheless, working in terms of long histories, especially as a postgraduate, can be a challenge. The push to define research topics early, to avoid sidetracks and tangents in favour of timely completion can lead to narrow specialisation that forecloses such possibilities. Working across boundaries of periodisation is assisted by academic environments where staff are supportive of such enterprises and, indeed, where there there simply are enough staff with a wide enough range of expertise to sustain and supervise this kind of work.

What was exciting for me, at both conference, was to see and hear people working in this way: where the necessarily tight focus of the conference paper format was informed by a broader awareness of the location of the subject matter and an explicitly critical awareness of how the past, periodisation and temporality is constructed.

My conference papers, on medievalism as a visual trope in Victorian photography, were informed by my interest in long histories, representations of the past and understandings of temporality. I don't know if I succeeded in pulling together all the layers of my argument: analysis of the photographs themselves (such as Henry Peach Robinson's The Lady of Shalott, 1861, detail above), the claim that such photographs unsettled emergent ways of understanding photography through the conjuntion of artifice and presence, and the possible implications for the fields of Victorian, medievalism and media studies. (On reflection, probably not - that's a lot to get through!). Here's a sample of the paper:

As obvious fictions and reproduced histories, Victorian medievalist photographs literally display a paradoxical relationship to the past: they offer a complex vision of temporality that is marked by contemporary novelty and desire for representations of the past under a realist banner. The colonisation of the new medium of photography by medievalist images raises questions of how to read the originality and the desire for origins inherent in new forms of media.

What am I trying to say here? Firstly, that I think long histories offer a very useful framework for generating new research, analysis and theory. Secondly, that if the first is true, then universities and disciplines need to find ways to support researchers in using this approach. If all else fails, pretty pictures are good.

AVSA Conference Abstract

Karen.Hall — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 04:32:00 GMT

There is a definite art to writing conference abstracts: fitting the conference theme and its audience, making something sound exciting - and more importantly, plausible - when you might not have really started researching the topic yet, leaving yourself a clear sense of direction as well as space for alteration and improvisation when you do come back to write the paper.

Today I'm reading out my abstract for the Australasian Victorian Studies Conference to the Nineteenth Century Discussion Group, and I thought I would share it here as well. The conference theme is 'Victorian Beginnings', and it is being held here at UWA in early February.

Cameras on Camelot: Medievalism and (Victorian) New Media

Victorian photography, Jonathon Crary argues, formed part of a ‘vast systemic rupture’ generated by a ‘new cultural economy of value and exchange’. Yet while photography may have represented – literally – the new, the ephemeral, and the beginnings of a culture based around simulacra and spectacle, it also allowed the imaginative reconstruction and evocation of the past. An examination of the medievalist photographs created by Henry Peach Robinson and Julia Margaret Cameron, among others, suggests the dual approaches to beginnings manifested in these images: they capture both the beginnings of Victorian new media and a revisitation of the beginnings of British national identity. As both ‘certificates of presence’ and obvious fictions, Victorian medievalist photographs engage with the paradoxical process of representing the past, a paradox made more obvious through the medium in which the representations are created. These photographs bear obvious signs of artifice and are tied to the present by the novelty of the medium, yet they attempt to offer visual access to the past in a way not previously possible. As a record of a moment of reality, they present a vision of the past that carries a weight of presence despite the temporal gap between the production of the image and its constructed content. As part of a circulation of medievalist images across media – primarily painting, writing, and photography – medievalist photographs provide one venue in which to examine the continuities and changes generated by new forms of media, exemplifying the contradictions of modernity in their appeal to new and to old beginnings.

I'm not really happy with the title, but I am looking forward to giving the paper (it has already been accepted). The pictures themselves are fascinating and they open up productive avenues of investigation and interdisciplinary scholarship. I'm looking forward to feedback from the discussion group - and any comments any reader might have!

Life in Thesis-land : medievalism

Long Histories

AVSA Conference Abstract