Categories
19th Century Literature, Medicine and Science

Exploring the Institutionalisation of Archaeology

Maqdala 1868 exhibition at the Victorian and Albert Museum. Source: vam.ac.uk

by Abbey Ellis and Subha Robert William

The discipline of archaeology was born in the museum. In the words of Andrew Christenson, “museums were really the first professional homes for archaeology.” Indeed, museums in the mid-nineteenth century played an important role in the institutionalisation of archaeology, forming an essential stepping stone to the discipline we know today. The historical and contemporary intersections between archaeology, museums and collections provide ample scope for research and debate, as the relationship between archaeology and museums has been much altered over time through changing displays, practices, and museum politics.

Continue reading “Exploring the Institutionalisation of Archaeology”
Categories
Culture, Text and History Early Modern and Shakespeare Life writing, Creative writing and Performance Literature, Medicine and Science

The heterogeneous nature of manuscript recipe books in early modern England

Martha Hodges' Recipe Book. Courtesy of Wellcome Library.

by Kate Owen
Kate Owen has recently completed her MA in the English department at King’s College London. She has an interest in the medical humanities, the transmission of scientific knowledge in the early modern period, and is currently a volunteer at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Museum and Archive. 

In the second semester of my master’s programme, Early Modern English Literature: Text and Transmission, I took a module called ‘professing writing’. This module looks at a large range of literary and non-literary genres, such as poetry, devotional texts, travel writing and scientific writing. Through guest lecturers and trips to professional libraries, the module also introduced different approaches to academic research. It was on one of these trips to the Wellcome Library, that I first came across early modern women’s recipe books.

Continue reading “The heterogeneous nature of manuscript recipe books in early modern England”
Categories
19th Century Culture, Text and History Literature, Medicine and Science

Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes: American Telegraphic Literature

Receiving a message on a Morse telegraph General Post Office, St Martin's-le-Grand, London, 1879. © World History Archive

by Harriet Thompson, PhD candidate in the English department at King’s College London. 

William John Johnston’s Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes is a volume of late nineteenth-century American fiction comprised of ‘contributions from the pens of all the prominent writers in the ranks of telegraphic literature’. Johnston was himself a telegraph operator, as well as a publisher, and editor of the profession’s leading trade journal ‘The Operator’. He published a number of notable works of telegraphic literature by women telegraphers, including Ella Cheever Thayer’s novel Wired Love and short fictional works by Lida Churchill and Josie Schofield.

Continue reading “Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes: American Telegraphic Literature”
Categories
Colonial, Postcolonial and Transnational Culture

Configurations of Empire

By James Rakoczi

Configurations of Empire is an interdisciplinary reading group for researchers and postgraduate students that explores the conditions of life, labour, and belonging under contemporary formations of capitalism. It runs in parallel from two sites: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and through the London Arts and Humanities Partnership at King’s College London. We meet regularly to discuss readings from the latest scholarship in critical race, feminist, queer, postcolonial, Marxist, disability, and decolonial theory. These parallel reading groups have culminated in a yearly conference in which both groups come together to share how our mutual readings have informed our research.

Continue reading “Configurations of Empire”
Categories
Culture, Text and History Early Modern and Shakespeare Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Reflections from ‘The Early Modern Inns of Court and the Circulation of Text’ Conference

The Dolphin's Back performing The Misfortunes of Arthur on June 14th at Gray's Inn Chapel
The Dolphin's Back performing The Misfortunes of Arthur on June 14th at Gray's Inn Chapel

By Dr Romola Nuttall and Julian Neuhauser

‘The Early Modern Inns of Court and the Circulation of Text’ was one of the events supported by the King’s English Department and two of its research groups (the Text Histories and Politics Research Cluster and the Collaborative Seed Fund Partnership) in the academic year 2018-19. This ambitious two-day conference took place in Bush House on 14-15 June 2019. What began as a conference expanded to include a talk at Middle Temple by the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, (and Middle Templar) Lord Igor Judge, an event at Temple Church held in conjunction with the Inner Temple Historical Society and the Inner Temple Drama society, a Middle Temple Library exhibition of materials curated especially for the conference, and a professional revival of The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587) by the Dolphin’s Back theatre company in Gray’s Inn Chapel on 14 June 2019.

Continue reading “Reflections from ‘The Early Modern Inns of Court and the Circulation of Text’ Conference”