In 2015 the Office of Art and Archives focused on adding more art and archival content to the History, Art & Archives website (http://history.house.gov/). The website is a collaborative effort: curators and archivists in the Office of Art and Archives and Office of the Historian staff work on and contribute content. The Office of Art and Archives…[Read more]

This paper presents some of the ideas central to my current developing research into the modes of historical television drama, particularly the Gothic mode. In focusing on the 2018 television adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the paper illustrates the idea of the Gothic mode in operation, considering its relationship to notions of historical…[Read more]

This booklet serves as documentation and manual for the app Creative Museum, the new participatory platform of the Badisches Landesmuseum. The goal of the app is to create a digital space for debate. Museum employees, experts and citizens are invited to get into conversation with each other and share their contributions on equal terms. The topics…[Read more]

This paper examines the use of the Gothic mode in historical television drama to suggest it is used to emphasise engagement with historical traumas, and suggest that these traumas still have relevance today. This emphasis works by engaging with the associations that are acquired around the Gothic mode through experience, recognising the aesthetic…[Read more]

This paper proposes that there are a number of historical television dramas which make use of the aesthetics of the Gothic in order to signal their focus on historical traumas which still have contemporary resonance. This is part of a wider use of a Gothic mode in these dramas in presenting and considering these traumas, not just as the individual…[Read more]

Television historical dramas take on a number of different modes, which inflect how they are interpreted. The Gothic mode, signalled in part by aesthetics and a focus on trauma, encourages audiences to engage with the past as a place of horror and darkness. Through intentional anachronism and the presentation of contemporary parallels, these…[Read more]

The author begins by saying that before he was born, he lived with his parents (of course) and ends his story 86 years later with an evanescent farewell. In the interval: a life of no importance. So why tell it? For lack of a better answer, he adduces mysterious voices in the second part of Goethe’s Faust:
We immer…[Read more]

Guest lecture at the University of Warsaw From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria Reading Group, 11 May 2023.
Historical dramas can be presented in many different ways in film and television, with the mode in which the genre of historical drama is presented influencing how that drama is understood. Thus, the same events portrayed in a comic mode will…[Read more]

El autor comienza diciendo que antes de nacer vivía con sus padres (claro) y termina su relato 86 años después con una despedida evanescente. En el intervalo: una vida sin huella. ¿Entonces por qué contarla? A falta de mejor respuesta, aduce voces misteriosas en la segunda parte del Fausto de Goethe:
“Redimimos a quien se esfuerza en vano”…[Read more]

El autor comienza diciendo que antes de nacer vivía con sus padres (claro) y termina su relato 86 años después con una despedida evanescente. En el intervalo: una vida sin huella. ¿Entonces por qué contarla? A falta de mejor respuesta, aduce voces misteriosas en la segunda parte del Fausto de Goethe:
“Redimimos a quien se esfuerza en vano”…[Read more]

On the example of “The Walking Dead”, we demonstrate in how far the reception of pop culture narratives can serve not merely trivial entertainment, but epistemological interest as well. For this purpose, we introduce the term pop cultural secondary worlds and formulate the thesis that these can be used analogously to thought experiments. The…[Read more]

This paper examines a strand in British television historical drama that presents what I term a “Gothicised” version of history. This actively engages with historical trauma as returning to confront its originating society, as the classic Gothic text represents the returning or ongoing effects of a traumatic past in the narrative present. In Peaky…[Read more]

This paper considers the 2018 television adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock as an example of Gothicised historical television drama, which uses the Gothic mode to present a past in a way that challenges our expectations of what prestige historical drama should be like, and to emphasise historical traumas and the way that they are still relevant…[Read more]

Keynote paper.
This paper examines the connections between the winter season and Gothic historical television dramas. It defines Gothic historical television dramas as dramas with a historical setting that take on a Gothic aesthetic and emphasise themes of trauma which are active in the past and continue to be active in the present. It also…[Read more]

In the Argentine film “The Headless Woman” (“La mujer sin cabeza”, Lucrecia Martel, 2008), the protagonist Vero is haunted by the possibility of killing someone in a hit-and-run. Although hinting at the crimes committed during the last dictatorship in Argentina, “The Headless Woman” refers more to a mechanism of the past that is transformed and…[Read more]

Prédio sito na Calçada de Sant’Ana tornejando para a Rua do Instituto Bacteriológico, LISBOA PORTUGAL Photographed by Ph.G. de MENDONCA (Wikidata Q90315009). 16 September 2020. This photograph was created by Philippe Gil de Mendonça to document the architecture of Portugal at the request of wikipedia.org and commons.wikimedia.org. The cop…[Read more]

Av. Duque d’Avila 18 LISBOA PORTUGAL Photographed by Ph.G. de MENDONCA (Wikidata Q98462960). 6 September 2020. This photograph was created by Philippe Gil de Mendonça to document the architecture of Portugal at the request of wikipedia.org and commons.wikimedia.org. The copyright and usage rights of the original (16MP) picture remain exclusively…[Read more]

Palácio da Mitra, Marvila, LISBOA PORTUGAL Photographed by Ph.G. de MENDONCA (Wikidata Q74474222). 2 October 2022. This photograph was created by Philippe Gil de Mendonça to document the architecture of Portugal at the request of wikipedia.org and commons.wikimedia.org. The copyright and usage rights of the original (16MP) picture remain e…[Read more]