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Inside the invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid

Celeste-Marie Bernier, Alan Rice, Lubaina Himid, and Hannah Durkin

Liverpool University PressFirst published 2019 byLiverpool University Press4 Cambridge StreetLiverpoolL69 7ZUCopyright © 2019 Celeste-Marie Bernier, Alan Rice, Lubaina Himid and Hannah Durkin...

James Watt (1736-1819): Culture, Innovation and Enlightenment

Caroline Archer-Parré and Malcolm Dick (eds)

James Watt (1736-1819) was a pivotal figure of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. His career as a scientific instrument maker, inventor and engineer developed in Scotland, the land of ... More

James Watt (1736-1819) was a pivotal figure of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. His career as a scientific instrument maker, inventor and engineer developed in Scotland, the land of birth. His prominence as a scientist, technologist and businessman was forged in the Birmingham area. His pumping and rotative steam engines represent the summit of technological achievement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries which led to future developments in locomotive and steamship design and mechanical engineering such as the steam hammer. This is the traditional picture of James Watt. After his death, his son, James Watt junior, projected his father’s image through commissioning sculptures, medals, paintings and biographies which celebrated his reputation as a ‘great man’ of industry and science. Though some academic appraisals have sought to move beyond the heroic image of Watt, there is still a tendency to focus on his steam technology. This collection of ten chapters breaks new ground by looking at Watt in new ways: by exploring his philosophical and intellectual background; the relevance of his Greenock environment; the influence of his wives, Peggy and Ann; Watt’s political fears and beliefs; his links with other scientists such as Thomas Beddoes, Davies Giddy, Humphry Davy, Joseph Black and James Keir; Watt and the business of natural philosophy; his workshop in the Science Museum and what it reveals; the myth or reality of his involvement with organ making and the potential of Birmingham’s Watt Papers for further exploration of his personality, family and domestic and business activities.Less

Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast

Alice Johnson

This book reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the time of the city’s greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. Using extensive primary material including ... More

This book reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the time of the city’s greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. Using extensive primary material including personal correspondence, memoirs, diaries and newspapers, the author draws a rich portrait of Belfast society and explores both the public and inner lives of Victorian bourgeois families. Leading business families like the Corrys and the Workmans, alongside their professional counterparts, dominated Victorian Belfast’s civic affairs, taking pride in their locale and investing their time and money in improving it. This social group displayed a strong work ethic, a business-oriented attitude and religious commitment, and its female members led active lives in the domains of family, church and philanthropy. While the Belfast bourgeoisie had parallels with other British urban elites, they inhabited a unique place and time: ‘Linenopolis’ was the only industrial city in Ireland, a city that was neither fully Irish nor fully British, and at the very time that its industry boomed, an unusually violent form of sectarianism emerged. Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast provides a fresh examination of familiar themes such as civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelicalism, recreation, marriage and family life, and represents a substantial and important contribution to Irish social history.Less

Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in Modern France

Etienne Achille, Charles Forsdick, and Lydie Moudileno (eds)

Recognized as one of the most influential studies of memory in the late twentieth century for its elaboration of a ground-breaking paradigm for rethinking the relationship between the nation, ... More

Recognized as one of the most influential studies of memory in the late twentieth century for its elaboration of a ground-breaking paradigm for rethinking the relationship between the nation, territory, history and memory, Pierre Nora’s monumental project Les Lieux de mémoire has also been criticized for implying a narrow perception of national memory from which the legacy of colonialism was excluded. Driven by an increasingly critical postcolonial discourse on French historiography and fuelled by the will to acknowledge the relevance of the colonial in the making of modern and contemporary France, the present volume intends to address in a collective and sustained manner this critical gap by postcolonializing the French Republic’s lieux de mémoire. The various essays discern and explore an initial repertoire of realms and sites in France and the so-called Outremer that crystalize traces of colonial memory, while highlighting its inherent dialectical relationship with the firmly instituted national memory. By making visible the invisible thread that links the colonial to various manifestations of French heritage, the objective is to bring to the fore the need to anchor the colonial in a collective memory that has often silenced it, and foster new readings of the past as it is represented, remembered and inscribed in the nation’s collective imaginary.Less