media – German Historical Institute London Blog

The Welsh Fasting Girl: A Morbid Spectacle

The story of Sarah Jacob is a tragic one.¹ On 17 December 1869, when she was not yet 13 years old, she died of starvation. There was no shortage of food or unwillingness to provide her with food, had she asked for it. Her family, trained nurses, and male doctors were around her when she passed away, but they all quite literally watched her die.

E.g. ‘The drama of the Welsh fasting girl […] has ended tragically’. Anon., ‘The Week. Topics of the Day’, The Medical Times and Gazette, 25 Dec. 1869, 738 (my emphases); ‘The second act of the Carmarthen Tragedy has been played out’. Anon., No Title, The Western Mail, 27 Dec. 1869, 2. [↩]

New Publication on Manuscript Newsletters around 1700

The new volume Scribal News in Politics and Parliament 1660–1760, which has just been published as a special issue of the journal Parliamentary History, gathers twelve essays by scholars from Britain, Europe, and North America on the role of scribal news in reporting about parliament and politics in Britain between 1660 and 1760. The volume grew out of a one-day conference held between the History of Parliament and the German Historical Institute London (both institutions are neighbours on Bloomsbury Square) in December 2018 to explore a hitherto underinvestigated topic at the intersection of political and media history.

Directories and the Legibility of Urban Spaces, 1760–1830

It seems like the logical conclusion to a friendly and fruitful relationship that my monograph on town directories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, entitled Die Stadt lesen: Englische ‘Directories’ als Wissens- und Orientierungsmedien, 1760–1830, has recently been published in the GHIL’s series with De Gruyter Oldenbourg. By far the largest part of my archival research—with most sources relevant to my Ph.D. held by English archives—was made possible by two GHIL scholarships, which also allowed me to discuss my ongoing work with colleagues at the Institute.

The Politics of Photography: An Interview with Mary-Ann Kennedy

In the run-up to the launch of the GHIL’s online exhibition ‘Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media‘ on 23 November, 2021 at 1pm GMT, we chatted with artist and activist Mary Ann Kennedy. Kennedy is a founding member of the Photography Workshop (Edinburgh)/Portfolio Gallery and the WildFires network for women who work in and with photography in Scotland. She is currently the Programme Leader for the BA(Hons) Photography degree at Edinburgh Napier University. The interviewer is Jane Freeland, the coordinator of the International Standing Working Group and a historian of feminism and gender in modern Germany working at the GHIL.

Vicarious Observation: Conveying Pleasure and Sensory Experience in Eighteenth-Century British Periodicals

The time I spent perusing the British Library’s early modern treasures—thanks to a scholarship from the German Historical Institute London—left me with much to think about for my current research project on the body and pleasure in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century periodicals. First and foremost, my time in London gave me a heightened sense of how newspapers and magazines functioned as a medium for conveying pleasure, not least as a sensory experience.

Conference Report: ‘Archiving, Recording and Representing Feminism: The Global History of Women’s Emancipation in the Twentieth Century’

The second meeting of the International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment was held virtually between December 10 and 12, 2020. Bringing together 29 scholars from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America, the conference examined the theme of “Archiving, Recording and Representing Feminism: The Global History of Women’s Emancipation in the Twentieth Century.” Drawing from an interdisciplinary methodology, it explored how processes of narrrativization and the cataloguing of knowledge, whether in the media, the archive or in historical practice, have shaped the development and understandings of women’s emancipation. Convened by Christina von Hodenberg and Jane Freeland (GHI London), alongside partners at the Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office, the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., the German Historical Institute Rome and the Orient Institute Beirut, the conference forms part of the international research project “Knowledge Unbound: Internationalization, Networking, Innovation in and by the Max Weber Stiftung” and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The Media, Feminism and Women’s Emancipation: The International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment

In late 2017, #MeToo began trending on Twitter. Taken up in response to growing allegations of sexual harassment in Hollywood, it quickly became a tangible way for women to show the pervasive nature of gender-based violence and harassment. #MeToo sparked a movement and global reckoning with gender inequality and revealed the mass mobilizing power of social media.