This essay argues that the changes that occurred in the form, function, material and internal decorative schemes of the Great House before 1660 was less of a transformation and more of a slow evolution. The popularity of plasterwork in the Great House from the Tudors to the Restoration, demonstrates its importance in the evolution of such…[Read more]

This dissertation ‘Inns and Innkeeping in North Hertfordshire: 1660-1815’ addresses the lack of a localised study on this building type and supplements the wider body of work that has been undertaken, on inn form, function and innkeeping lifestyles in other regions of England during the long eighteenth century.

This book challenges an assumption at the heart of contemporary theoretical debates: that it is impossible to reason through history. Steele believes that two influential schools of contemporary thought “hide from history”: liberal philosophies of public reason as espoused by such figures as Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum and stru…[Read more]

Organic chemistry in the nineteenth century developed with a specific order of discovery, which was the inevitable path by which our knowledge of organic chemistry had to develop. New methods of analysis of organic materials led to new experimental results, which led to new theories about the nature of organic chemistry. Some of those theories…[Read more]

This thesis is the result of an investigative work on the formulations and defense ofreligious tolerance in the Catholic Enlightenment of Portugal, to a greater extent, butalso touching on some transits with Brazil. It is assumed that the secularization processthrough which the Iberian kingdom passed, during the eighteenth century, was…[Read more]

This graduate reading seminar examines some of the historical literature on migration in a global perspective, focusing on the nineteenth century through the present. It focuses on theoretical approaches to the study of migration as well as on case studies, moving between longue-durée and comparative issues on the one hand and local effects of…[Read more]

This chapter examines the process by which Puerto Rican nationalists engaged with the Olympic Movement in their struggle for decolonization. Sotomayor shows not only shifting meanings of colonial Olympic sport for nationalists, but, more generally, that the Olympic Movement has been used and serves as a platform to negotiate nationalism and…[Read more]

Responding to the title of the seminar, “Nordic Art Education in Motion,” and to its theme, “Digital competences and computational thinking: preparing children, young people and adults for a digitalized society,” I discuss the “archaic identity of change” (to draw from Etel Adnan) present in calls for motion and preparation. I conceptualize art…[Read more]

Program of the Sensory Histories of Place workshop, organized by me and Elvan Baştürk Cobb, at ANAMED in 2015.

The ultimate cause of much historical, social and cultural change is the gradual accumulation of human knowledge of the environment. Human beings use the materials in their environment to meet their needs and increased human knowledge of the environment enables human needs to be met in a more efficient manner. When human knowledge of the…[Read more]

This short piece reviews Michael Kater’s recent overview of culture in Nazi Germany, taking issue both with its core scholarly contentions and its problematic use of language.

This co-authored piece introduces our co-edited volume ‘Dreams of Germany’. It explores how, where and by whom notions of ‘musical Germanness’ have been constituted in the modern era, and to what effect. Picking up on ideas first explored systematically by Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter in their 2002 collection ‘Music and German National…[Read more]

The ultimate cause of much historical, social and cultural change is the gradual accumulation of knowledge of the human environment. The invention of glass and microscopes and telescopes, substantially increased human knowledge of the human environment. Microscopes and telescopes would not have been possible without the prior discovery of…[Read more]

The invention of photography was only possible due to the camera obscura effect which produces an upside down image of a scene on the back wall of a box when light is reflected through a tiny hole in the box. The camera obscura effect has been known since classical times. The invention of photography required that the image be fixed and…[Read more]

The invention of motion pictures was only possible due to the prior discovery of the phenomenon of persistence of vision, the prior invention of photography and the ability to produce photographs with very brief exposure times. These discoveries were necessary before motion pictures could be invented, and given how human beings like to be…[Read more]