The Art and Visual Politics of the Tichborne Claimant Case in Victorian London Jennifer Tucker

The Art and Visual Politics of the Tichborne Claimant Case in Victorian London

Jennifer Tucker
Associate Professor of History, Science & Society, and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Wesleyan University

Thursday, March 17, 2011
4:30 p.m., King 323

My paper “The Art and Visual Politics of the Tichborne Claimant Case in Victorian London” is part of a longer study I am completing about the history of visual evidence, legal testimony, and the formation of public opinion about contested identities in nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing on examples from hundreds of photographs, engravings, and other visual materials that circulated around the time of the high-profile trial, I plan to discuss how the physical movement of photographs and other visual materials through time and space shaped the meaning of the case from the beginning. The case offers revealing clues to mid-nineteenth century attitudes both about photographs as documentary evidence and about the law as a photographic arena in the years before the Bertillon method and other visual forensic techniques were introduced.

Jennifer Tucker received her BA in Human Biology (Neuropsychology of Vision, Perception, and Memory) from Stanford University, her master’s in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, and her Ph.D. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Johns Hopkins University. She currently is Associate Professor of History at Wesleyan University and a member of the core faculty of the Science in Society Program and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (Chair, 2008-2009). Her research interests include the history of science and technology, Victorian visual culture, photographic truth and evidence, early science film history and spectatorship, gender and science, and the links between art and the popularization of science in the British Empire. She is the author of Nature Exposed: Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Science (Johns Hopkins University, 2005) and the editor of a recent special theme issue of History and Theory on “Photography and Historical Interpretation” (Dec. 2009). She has published on scientific ballooning, visual history and the archive, photographic evidence in Victorian law, and the relationship between gender and genre in nineteenth-century European scientific illustration. Her research and teaching have been supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Carol A. Baker Memorial Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research, Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies Grant, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Summer Research Stipend, Clark Art Institute Visiting Research Fellowship, Smithsonian Institution Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation Grant, Johns Hopkins University Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and a British Marshall Scholarship. In 2009-2010, she was in residence as a Hixon-Riggs Visiting Professor of History and Science/Technology Studies at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Recent events she has organized include “Eye of History: The Camera as Witness” and “Science a Moving Image”. Her current project, “The Art and Visual Politics of the Tichborne Claimant Affair,” excavates hundreds of photographs, engravings, and other visual materials that circulated around the time of the high-profile trial in order to show how the physical movement of photographs and other visual materials through time and space shaped the meaning of the case from the beginning. The case offers revealing clues to mid-nineteenth century attitudes both about photographs as documentary evidence and about the law as a photographic arena in the years before the Bertillon method and other visual forensic techniques were introduced. She is also conducting research on the significance of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1850 to 1930 in the history of photography and cinema, particularly documentary film.

AMAM Lecture series

Wednesday, September 29, 5 pm—Hallock Auditorium, Lewis Center for Environmental Studies

Trevor Paglen, Photography and the Creation of the World

Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer whose work deliberately blurs lines between social science, contemporary art, journalism, and other disciplines. His visual work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, the Andy Warhol Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and has been featured in numerous publications including the New York Times, Aperture, and Art Forum. He is the author of four books: Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights (2006), I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me (2007), Blank Spots on a Map (2009), and Invisible (forthcoming August 30, 2010). Paglen holds a B.A. from UC Berkkeley, an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley. He currently resides in Oakland, California and New York City.

Tuesday, October 5, 5 pm—Hallock Auditorium, Lewis Center for Environmental Studies

Andy Grundberg, Culture Wars Revisited: Mapplethorpe, Photography, Pornography and the Real

Andy Grundberg is a curator, teacher, arts consultant and former New York Times critic who has been involved with photography and art for more than twenty-five years. Among the major exhibitions he has organized are Photography and Art: Interactions Since 1946 (1987), Points of Entry: Tracing Cultures (1996), Ansel Adams: A Legacy (1997), and In Response to Place: Photographs from the Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places (2001). His books include Alexey Brodovitch (1989), Mike and Doug Starn (1990), and The Crisis of the Real (1999), a collection of essays, which examine the notion that photography both reflects and helps shape the contemporary art world. Grundberg is currently the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and the Chair of Photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C.

Monday, October 11, 5 pm—Classroom 1, Allen Art Building

Mark Levitch, Filling the Void: The Culture of Photography in Great War France

Mark Levitch holds a Ph.D. in modern and contemporary art history from the University of Pennsylvania. Previously an intelligence analyst at the State Department, Levitch works as a researcher and writer at the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. He is also the author of Pantheon De La Guerre: Reconfiguring a Panorama of the Great War (2006), the first historical and scholarly exploration of the Pantheon. Oberlin’s Professor of History Leonard Smith writes: “Levitch’s fine archaeology of the Pantheon provides a great service to historians of the memory of the Great War.” Levitch combines cultural history, art history and material culture studies to trace the changing reception of traditional art in the new age of mechanical media.

Thursday, October 14, 5 pm—Hallock Auditorium, Lewis Center for Environmental Studies

David Odo, Reframed Meanings: Early Photography of Japan as Souvenir/Science

David Odo is the Bradley Assistant Curator of Academic Affairs at the Yale University Art Gallery. He previously taught in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. Odo received his D.Phil. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and has held numerous research fellowships, including appointments at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Freer/Sackler Galleries, Harvard University, and the University of Tokyo. He has edited, curated and published work on early Japanese and Asian photography. His most recent publications are Unknown Japan: Reconsidering Early Photographs, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2008) and “Expeditionary Photographs of the Ogasawara Islands, 1875-76” (in History of Photography, 2009).

EJ's Visiting Artist Justine Kurland.Thursday, September 18th

Justine will lecture on her work Thursday, September 18th in Classroom 1 @ 4-30pm