How did migrants’ presence manifest itself in the Vienna urban space and how can we study it?

“Answering the Call of the Severed Head,” Heads Will Roll: Decapitation Motifs in Medieval Literature, ed. Larissa Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 2012)

This essay considers the user experience of Google Earth, comparing the world it presents with other world views including static print maps, medieval mappaemundi, and Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. It also considers the scopic environment of Google Earth in relation to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a theoretical prison design int…[Read more]

Medieval Christian mapmakers represented a range of peoples, animals and monsters against which they defined their place what they believed to be God’s divine plan. Rooted in earlier anti-Semitic tropes, the detailed world maps of the thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries contain multiple problematic representations of Jews, perceived at once as d…[Read more]

An account of why I am a strong advocate for collaborative writing, and why I seek co-authors as often as I do.

The story of Lough Derg in Ireland’s County Donegal is arranged around clusters of sectarian narratives in juxtaposition, synthesis and conflict. The Sanctuary of Saint Patrick sits on Station Island, a small rocky islet set within the waters of the lake. The site became well known in the early Middle Ages as the place of Saint Patrick’s del…[Read more]

Book review. Marcin Moskalewicz and Wojciech Przybylski “Understanding Central Europe,” Routledge, 2017.

Through The Making of Early Kashmir, Shonaleeka Kaul, who teaches in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, deftly presents a new discourse on Kashmir’s culture and history and successfully argues not only that a traditional Sanskrit text can indeed function as a historical text, but that the very fact that s…[Read more]

In the cultural and religious history of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory—a centuries-old Catholic pilgrim site situated on Station Island within the waters of Donegal’s Lough Derg—the mass drowning of 1795 stands out. The aftermath was devastating, stamping a lasting mark on the memory of place. The disaster continues to be complicated by its entangl…[Read more]

A series of sketches written in 1924 during an ocean crossing from New York to Tilbury, “Passage to England” was published only in 1998 by the Thomas Wolfe Society and is hardly Wolfe’s most popular or most accomplished work. Nonetheless I always felt that Passage to England had something unique and idiosyncratic and that despite a certain a…[Read more]

Selections from DE LA MANUFACTURE AU MUR: Pour une histoire matérielle du papier peint 1770-1914 (From the Workshop to the Wall – Toward a Material History of Wallpaper 1770-1914) a thesis by Dr. Bernard Jacqué, University of Lyon, 2003. Translated by Robert M. Kelly.

PDF 3: The Scenic Revival of the Twentieth Century

Selections from DE LA MANUFACTURE AU MUR: Pour une histoire matérielle du papier peint 1770-1914 (From the Workshop to the Wall – Toward a Material History of Wallpaper 1770-1914) a thesis by Dr. Bernard Jacqué, University of Lyon (2003). Translated by Robert M. Kelly.

PDF 2: Zuber’s “Indépendance” (1853), a hand-painted restatement of “Scenic…[Read more]

Selections from DE LA MANUFACTURE AU MUR: Pour une histoire matérielle du papier peint 1770-1914 (From the Workshop to the Wall – Toward a Material History of Wallpaper 1770-1914) a thesis by Dr. Bernard Jacqué, University of Lyon (2003). Translated by Robert M. Kelly.

PDF 1: A Historiography of Wallpaper

Historic Nova Scotia is a digital humanities and public history project that aims to bring community histories to life online (https://historicnovascotia.ca/). This paper will explore how collaborative, digital-storytelling can help bridge the gap between heritage theory and practice. We will provide an overview of the project followed by specific…[Read more]

Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), prominent astronomer and world-renowned socialist theorist, stood at the nexus of the revolutions in politics, science and the arts of the early twentieth century. His astronomy was uniquely visual and highly innovative, while his politics were radical. Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society collects…[Read more]

The genealogy of board games in Britain is also an expression of its imperial past. Built on colonialist and orientalist tropes that reinforce a hierarchy of race, their legacy is still discernible in the worlds created for the games played today.

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An updated version of my Portolan piece from 2018.

The chapter deals with the image of the personal union between Saxony and Poland as portrayed in the novels of the Polish writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, who emigrated to the Saxon capital of Dresden in the 19th century. His so called Saxon Novels are an important source for popular conceptions of history until today.

Georg Leibbrandt (1899-1982), one of the leading figures in the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs and the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, claimed his status as an expert for questions concerning Eastern Europe on the basis of his origin: Born as a Volksdeutscher in the Ukraine, he devoted himself early to racial thinking and to…[Read more]

Monarchy – Republic – Dictatorship. The District of Görlitz between 1900 and 1939

The article deals with the images and perceptions of Paris and London as seen by German intellectuals in the era of the French revolution. It discusses the key concepts “freedom” and “equality”, using the examples of Joachim Heinrich Campe and Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz.