Reassembling The Collection

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Reassembling the Collection

Author : Rodney Harrison
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781934691946
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (919 download)

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Book Synopsis Reassembling the Collection by : Rodney Harrison

Download or read book Reassembling the Collection written by Rodney Harrison and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reassembling the Collection presents innovative approaches to the study of historical and contemporary engagements between museums and the various individuals and communities who were (and are) involved in their production and consumption. Reassembling the Collection is interdisciplinary in scope and international in coverage. It addresses fundamental questions about the nature, value, and efficacy of museum collections in a postcolonial world, and the entangled agencies of those who have made, traded, received, collected, curated, worked with, researched, viewed, and experienced them in the past and present. In moving beyond the concerns of the politics of representation that have dominated critical museum studies, Reassembling the Collection considers the material networks and affective qualities of "things" alongside their representational role within the museum and explores the ways in which concepts of agency and indigeneity need to be reconfigured in light of the study of these concepts within the museum context. The contributors explore key concepts including the idea of museums as "meshworks" of material and social assemblages; how an "archaeological sensibility" might inform approaches to understanding past and present relationships between people, "things," and institutions in relation to museums; and the "weight of things" and sense of "curatorial responsibility," which arises from a reconsideration of the nature of museum objects.

Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age

Author : Howard Hotson
Publisher : Göttingen University Press
ISBN 13 : 3863954033
Total Pages : 477 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (639 download)

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Book Synopsis Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age by : Howard Hotson

Download or read book Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age written by Howard Hotson and published by Göttingen University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1500 and 1800, the rapid evolution of postal communication allowed ordinary men and women to scatter letters across Europe like never before. This exchange helped knit together what contemporaries called the ‘respublica litteraria’, a knowledge-based civil society, crucial to that era’s intellectual breakthroughs, formative of many modern values and institutions, and a potential cornerstone of a transnational level of European identity. Ironically, the exchange of letters which created this community also dispersed the documentation required to study it, posing enormous difficulties for historians of the subject ever since. To reassemble that scattered material and chart the history of that imagined community, we need a revolution in digital communications. Between 2014 and 2018, an EU networking grant assembled an interdisciplinary community of over 200 experts from 33 different countries and many different fields for four years of structured discussion. The aim was to envisage transnational digital infrastructure for facilitating the radically multilateral collaboration needed to reassemble this scattered documentation and to support a new generation of scholarly work and public dissemination. The framework emerging from those discussions – potentially applicable also to other forms of intellectual, cultural and economic exchange in other periods and regions – is documented in this book.

The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology

Author : Alice Stevenson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192586750
Total Pages : 663 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology by : Alice Stevenson

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology written by Alice Stevenson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a transnational reference point for critical engagements with the legacies of, and futures for, global archaeological collections. It challenges the common misconception that museum archaeology is simply a set of procedures for managing and exhibiting assemblages. Instead, this volume advances museum archaeology as an area of reflexive research and practice addressing the critical issues of what gets prioritized by and researched in museums, by whom, how, and why. Through twenty-eight chapters, authors problematize and suggest new ways of thinking about historic, contemporary, and future relationships between archaeological fieldwork and museums, as well as the array of institutional and cultural paradigms through which archaeological enquiries are mediated. Case studies embrace not just archaeological finds, but also archival field notes, photographic media, archaeological samples, and replicas. Throughout, museum activities are put into dialogue with other aspects of archaeological practice, with the aim of situating museum work within a more holistic archaeology that does not privilege excavation or field survey above other aspects of disciplinary engagement. These concerns will be grounded in the realities of museums internationally, including Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, North America, and Europe. In so doing, the common heritage sector refrain 'best practice' is not assumed to solely emanate from developed countries or European philosophies, but instead is considered as emerging from and accommodated within local concerns and diverse museum cultures.

Heritage

Author : Rodney Harrison
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415591953
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (155 download)

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Book Synopsis Heritage by : Rodney Harrison

Download or read book Heritage written by Rodney Harrison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historic sites, memorials, national parks, museumsewe live in an age in which heritage is ever-present. But what does it mean to live amongst the spectral traces of the past, the heterogeneous piling up of historic materials in the present? How did heritage grow from the concern of a handful of enthusiasts and specialists in one part of the world to something which is considered to be universally cherished? And what concepts and approaches are necessary to understanding this global obsession? Over the decades, since the adoption of the World Heritage Convention, various e~crisese(tm) of definition have significantly influenced the ways in which heritage is classified, perceived and managed in contemporary global societies. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the many tangible and intangible e~thingse(tm) now defined as heritage, this book attempts simultaneously to account for this global phenomenon and the industry which has grown up around it, as well as to develop a e~toolkit of conceptse(tm) with which it might be studied. In doing so, it provides a critical account of the emergence of heritage studies as an interdisciplinary field of academic study. This is presented as part of a broader examination of the function of heritage in late modern societies, with a particular focus on the changes which have resulted from the globalisation of heritage during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Developing new theoretical approaches and innovative models for more dialogically democratic heritage decision making processes, Heritage: Critical Approaches unravels the relationship between heritage and the experience of late modernity, whilst reorienting heritage so that it might be more productively connected with other pressing social, economic, political and environmental issues of our time.

Reassembling Motherhood

Author : Yasmine Ergas
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231538073
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Reassembling Motherhood by : Yasmine Ergas

Download or read book Reassembling Motherhood written by Yasmine Ergas and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word “mother” traditionally meant a woman who bears and nurtures a child. In recent decades, changes in social norms and public policy as well as advances in reproductive technologies and the development of markets for procreation and care have radically expanded definitions of motherhood. But while maternity has become a matter of choice for more women, the freedom to make reproductive decisions is unevenly distributed. Restrictive policies, socioeconomic disadvantages, cultural mores, and discrimination force some women into motherhood and prevent others from caring for their children. Reassembling Motherhood brings together contributors from across the disciplines to consider the transformation of motherhood as both an identity and a role. It examines how the processes of bearing and rearing a child are being restructured as reproductive labor and care work change around the globe. The authors examine issues such as artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, fetal ultrasounds, adoption, nonparental care, and the legal status of kinship, showing how complex chains of procreation and childcare have simultaneously generated greater liberty and new forms of constraint. Emphasizing the tension between the liberalization of procreation and care on the one hand, and the limits to their democratization due to race, class, and global inequality on the other, the book highlights debates that have emerged as these multifaceted changes have led to both the fragmentation and reassembling of motherhood.

Collection Conundrums

Author : Rebecca A. Buck
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1493082094
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Collection Conundrums by : Rebecca A. Buck

Download or read book Collection Conundrums written by Rebecca A. Buck and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-12-21 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection Conundrums: Solving Museum Registration Mysteries provides guidelines for investigating the oddities found in every museum collection - objects without record, identification or sometimes even a location - and determining what to do. Written by registrars Rebecca Buck and Jean A. Gilmore, editors of the best-selling The New Museum Registration Methods, this new volume contains essential information for museums large and small, new and old. The text offers solutions to the problems of old loans, undocumented objects found in collections, items lost in inventory, supplementary collections and more, as well as guidelines on how to keep problems from occurring in the first place. Features a history of registration methods and the standards for collection documentation and care, along with sample documents such as loan agreements, co-tenancy agreements, storage agreements and deed of gift. Recommended for everyone involved in collections planning and management.

Unpacking the Collection

Author : Sarah Byrne
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1441982221
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis Unpacking the Collection by : Sarah Byrne

Download or read book Unpacking the Collection written by Sarah Byrne and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Museum collections are often perceived as static entities hidden away in storerooms or trapped behind glass cases. By focusing on the dynamic histories of museum collections, new research reveals their pivotal role in shaping a wide range of social relations. Over time and across space the interactions between these artefacts and the people and institutions who made, traded, collected, researched and exhibited them have generated complex networks of material and social agency. In this innovative volume, the contributors draw on a broad range of source materials to explore the cross-cultural interactions which have created museum collections. These case studies contribute significantly to the development of new theoretical frameworks to examine broader questions of materiality, agency, and identity in the past and present. Grounded in case studies from individual objects and museum collections from North America, Europe, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Australia, this truly international volume juxtaposes historical, geographical, and cross-cultural studies. This work will be of great interest to archaeologists and anthropologists studying material culture, as well as researchers in museum studies and cultural heritage management.

Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice

Author : Cara Krmpotich
Publisher : UCL Press
ISBN 13 : 1800087047
Total Pages : 550 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice by : Cara Krmpotich

Download or read book Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice written by Cara Krmpotich and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2024-07-22 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a common misconception that collections management in museums is a set of rote procedures or technical practices that follow universal standards of best practice. This volume recognises collections management as a political, critical and social project, involving considerable intellectual labour that often goes unacknowledged within institutions and in the fields of museum and heritage studies. Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice brings into focus the knowledges, value systems, ethics and workplace pragmatics that are foundational for this work. Rather than engaging solely with cultural modifications, such as Indigenous care practices, the book presents local knowledge of place and material which is relevant to how collections are managed and cared for worldwide. Through discussion of varied collection types, management activities and professional roles, contributors develop a contextualised reflexive practice for how core collections management standards are conceptualised, negotiated and enacted. Chapters span national museums in Brazil and Uganda to community-led heritage work in Malaysia and Canada; they explore complexities of numbering, digitisation and description alongside the realities of climate change, global pandemics and natural disasters. The book offers a new definition of collections management, travelling from what is done to care for collections, to what is done to care for collections and their users. Rather than ‘use’ being an end goal, it emerges as a starting point to rethink collections work.

Reassembling the Self

Author : Susan Aldworth
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780955811319
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (113 download)

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Book Synopsis Reassembling the Self by : Susan Aldworth

Download or read book Reassembling the Self written by Susan Aldworth and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Scattered Finds

Author : Alice Stevenson
Publisher : UCL Press
ISBN 13 : 1787351416
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (873 download)

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Book Synopsis Scattered Finds by : Alice Stevenson

Download or read book Scattered Finds written by Alice Stevenson and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the 1880s and 1980s, British excavations at locations across Egypt resulted in the discovery of hundreds of thousands of ancient objects that were subsequently sent to some 350 institutions worldwide. These finds included unique discoveries at iconic sites such as the tombs of ancient Egypt's first rulers at Abydos, Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s city of Tell el-Amarna and rich Roman Era burials in the Fayum. Scattered Finds explores the politics, personalities and social histories that linked fieldwork in Egypt with the varied organizations around the world that received finds. Case studies range from Victorian municipal museums and women’s suffrage campaigns in the UK, to the development of some of the USA’s largest institutions, and from university museums in Japan to new institutions in post-independence Ghana. By juxtaposing a diversity of sites for the reception of Egyptian cultural heritage over the period of a century, Alice Stevenson presents new ideas about the development of archaeology, museums and the construction of Egyptian heritage. She also addresses the legacy of these practices, raises questions about the nature of the authority over such heritage today, and argues for a stronger ethical commitment to its stewardship. Praise for Scattered Finds 'Scattered Finds is a remarkable achievement. In charting how British excavations in Egypt dispersed artefacts around the globe, at an unprecedented scale, Alice Stevenson shows us how ancient objects created knowledge about the past while firmly anchored in the present. No one who reads this timely book will be able to look at an Egyptian antiquity in the same way again.' Professor Christina Riggs, UEA

Working Through Colonial Collections

Author : Margareta von Oswald
Publisher : Leuven University Press
ISBN 13 : 9462703108
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (627 download)

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Book Synopsis Working Through Colonial Collections by : Margareta von Oswald

Download or read book Working Through Colonial Collections written by Margareta von Oswald and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reckoning with colonial legacies in Western museum collections What are the possibilities and limits of engaging with colonialism in ethnological museums? This book addresses this question from within the Africa department of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. It captures the Museum at a moment of substantial transformation, as it prepared the move of its exhibition to the Humboldt Forum, a newly built and contested cultural centre on Berlin’s Museum Island. The book discusses almost a decade of debate in which German colonialism was negotiated, and further recognised, through conflicts over colonial museum collections. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork examining the Museum’s various work practices, this book highlights the Museum’s embeddedness in colonial logics and shows how these unfold in the Museum’s everyday activity. It addresses the diverse areas of expertise in the Ethnological Museum – the preservation, storage, curation, and research of collections – and also draws on archival research and oral history interviews with current and former employees. Working through Colonial Collections unravels the ongoing and laborious processes of reckoning with colonialism in the Ethnological Museum’s present – processes from which other ethnological museums, as well as Western museums more generally, can learn.

Confronting Colonial Objects

Author : Carsten Stahn
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192694138
Total Pages : 593 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

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Book Synopsis Confronting Colonial Objects by : Carsten Stahn

Download or read book Confronting Colonial Objects written by Carsten Stahn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-13 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The treatment of cultural colonial objects is one of the most debated questions of our time. Calls for a new international cultural order go back to decolonization. However, for decades, the issue has been treated as a matter of comity or been reduced to a Shakespearean dilemma: to return or not to return. Confronting Colonial Objects seeks to go beyond these classic dichotomies and argues that contemporary practices are at a tipping point. The book shows that cultural takings were material to the colonial project throughout different periods and went far beyond looting. It presents micro histories and object biographies to trace recurring justifications and contestations of takings and returns while outlining the complicity of anthropology, racial science, and professional networks that enabled colonial collecting. The book demonstrates the dual role of law and cultural heritage regulation in facilitating colonial injustices and mobilizing resistance thereto. Drawing on the interplay between justice, ethics, and human rights, Stahn develops principles of relational cultural justice. He challenges the argument that takings were acceptable according to the standards of the time and outlines how future engagement requires a re-invention of knowledge systems and relations towards objects, including new forms of consent, provenance research, and partnership, and a re-thinking of the role of museums themselves. Following the life story and transformation of cultural objects, this book provides a fresh perspective on international law and colonial history that appeals to audiences across a variety of disciplines. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities

Author : Bryony Onciul
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1783271655
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (832 download)

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Book Synopsis Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities by : Bryony Onciul

Download or read book Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities written by Bryony Onciul and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2017 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International, multi-disciplinary perspectives on the key question of community engagement in theory and practice in a diverse range of heritage settings. Across the global networks of heritage sites, museums, and galleries, the importance of communities to the interpretation and conservation of heritage is increasingly being recognised. Yet the very term "meaningful community engagement" betrays a myriad of contrary approaches and understandings. Who is a community? How can they engage with heritage and why would they want to? How do communities and heritage professionals perceive one another? What does itmean to "engage"? These questions unsettle the very foundations of community engagement and indicate a need to unpick this important but complex trend. Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities critically explores the latest debates and practices surrounding community collaboration. By examining the different ways in which communities participate in heritage projects, the book questions the benefits, costs and limitations of community engagement. Whether communities are engaging through innovative initiatives or in response to economic, political or social factors, there is a need to understand how such engagements are conceptualised, facilitated and experienced by boththe organisations and the communities involved. Bryony Onciul is Lecturer in History at the University of Exeter; Michelle Stefano is the Co-Director of Maryland Traditions, the folklife program for the state of Maryland and Visiting Assistant Professor in American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Stephanie Hawke is a project manager and fundraiser, working on a range of projects aiming to engage communities with culturalheritage. Contributors: Gregory Ashworth, Evita Busa, Helen Graham, Julian Hartley, Stephanie Hawke, Carl Hogsden, Shatha Abu Khafajah, Nicole King, Bernadette Lynch, Billie Lythberg, Conal McCarthy, Ashley Minner, Wayne Ngata, Bryony Onciul, Elizabeth Pishief, Gregory Ramshaw, Philipp Schorch, Justin Sikora, Michelle Stefano, Helen Tully, John Tunbridge.

Curatopia

Author : Philipp Schorch
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 1526118211
Total Pages : 533 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Curatopia by : Philipp Schorch

Download or read book Curatopia written by Philipp Schorch and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the future of curatorship? Is there a vision for an ideal model, a curatopia, whether in the form of a utopia or dystopia? Or is there a plurality of approaches, amounting to a curatorial heterotopia? This pioneering volume addresses these questions by considering the current state of curatorship. It reviews the different models and approaches operating in museums, galleries and cultural organisations around the world and discusses emerging concerns, challenges and opportunities. The collection explores the ways in which the mutual, asymmetrical relations underpinning global, scientific entanglements of the past can be transformed into more reciprocal, symmetrical forms of cross-cultural curatorship in the present, arguing that this is the most effective way for curatorial practice to remain meaningful. International in scope, the volume covers three regions: Europe, North America and the Pacific.

Exchanging Objects

Author : Catherine A. Nichols
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1800730535
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Exchanging Objects by : Catherine A. Nichols

Download or read book Exchanging Objects written by Catherine A. Nichols and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an historical account of the exchange of “duplicate specimens” between anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution and museums, collectors, and schools around the world in the late nineteenth century, this book reveals connections between both well-known museums and little-known local institutions, created through the exchange of museum objects. It explores how anthropologists categorized some objects in their collections as “duplicate specimens,” making them potential candidates for exchange. This historical form of what museum professionals would now call deaccessioning considers the intellectual and technical requirement of classifying objects in museums, and suggests that a deeper understanding of past museum practice can inform mission-driven contemporary museum work.

Sharing Authority in the Museum

Author : Michelle Horwood
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351251104
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

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Book Synopsis Sharing Authority in the Museum by : Michelle Horwood

Download or read book Sharing Authority in the Museum written by Michelle Horwood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sharing Authority in the Museum provides a detailed and fully contextualised study of a heritage assemblage over time, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Focussing on Māori objects, predominantly originating from the Ngā Paerangi tribe, housed in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the book examines thenuances of cross-cultural interactions between an indigenous community and an anthropological museum. Analysis centres on the legacy of historic ethnographic collecting on indigenous communities and museums, and the impact of different value systems and world views on access to heritage objects. Questions of curatorial responsibilities and authority over access rights are explored. Proposing a method for indigenous engagement to address this legacy, and making recommendations to guide participants when forging relationships based around indigenous cultural heritage, Michelle Horwood shows how to negotiate power and authority within these assemblages. She argues that by doing this and acknowledging and communicating our difficult histories, together we can move from collaborative approaches to shared authority and indigenous self-determination, progressing the task of decolonising the museum. Addressing a salient, complex issue by way of a grounded case study, Sharing Authority in the Museum is key reading for museum practitioners working with ethnographic collections, as well as scholars and students working in the fields of museum, heritage, Indigenous or cultural studies. It should also be of great interest to indigenous communities wishing to take the lessons learned from Ngā Paerangi’s experiences further within their own spheres of museum engagement.

Tudor Networks of Power

Author : Ruth Ahnert
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192602683
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

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Book Synopsis Tudor Networks of Power by : Ruth Ahnert

Download or read book Tudor Networks of Power written by Ruth Ahnert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tudor Networks of Power is the product of a groundbreaking collaboration between an early modern book historian and a physicist specializing in complex networks. Together they have reconstructed and computationally analysed the networks of intelligence, diplomacy, and political influence across a century of Tudor history (1509-1603), based on the British State Papers. The 130,000 letters that survive in the State Papers from the Tudor period provide crucial information about the textual organization of the social network centred on the Tudor government. Whole libraries have been written using this archive, but until now nobody has had access to the macroscopic tools that allow us to ask questions such as: What are the reasons for the structure of the Tudor government's intelligence network? What was it geographical reach and coverage? Can we use network data to show patterns of surveillance? What role did women play in these government networks? And what biases are there in the data? The authors employ methods from the field of network science, translating key concepts and approaches into a language accessible to literary scholars and historians, and illustrating them with examples drawn from this fantastically rich archive. Each chapter is the product of a set of thematically organized 'experiments', which show how particular methods can help to ask and answer research questions specific to the State Papers archive, but also have applications for other large bodies of humanities data. The fundamental aim of this book, therefore, is not merely to provide an innovative perspective on Tudor politics; it also aspires to introduce an entirely new audience to the methods and applications of network science, and to suggest the suitability of these methods for a range of humanistic inquiry.