{"id":3683,"date":"2021-05-27T07:01:32","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T07:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=3683"},"modified":"2021-05-27T07:03:28","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T07:03:28","slug":"imperial-material-napoleons-legacy-in-culture-art-and-heritage-1821-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=3683","title":{"rendered":"IMPERIAL MATERIAL: NAPOLEON\u2019S LEGACY IN CULTURE, ART, AND HERITAGE, 1821\u20132021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Online Workshop, 3rd September 2021<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Napoleon Bonaparte died exactly two hundred years ago on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He had spent the last six years of his life in exile on St Helena, removed from political and military power, in the unusual situation of being able to try to shape and preserve his own posthumous legacy. He was, in a way, phenomenally successful. Napoleon is an instantly recognisable name to this day, and despite growing efforts in recent years to critically revise his reputation and highlight his role in issues such as the reinstatement of slavery, he has largely managed to escape the same level of historical censure as other infamous military dictators. This is perhaps partly because his name has become such an adaptable brand, standing for an entire era of people, places, and events, as well as a full two centuries\u2019 worth of art, craft, and consumer commodities. While other events marking the bicentenary of Napoleon\u2019s death have weighed his contributions to legislative, political, and military reform, less work has been done to confront his vast material, visual, and cultural legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Napoleon\u2019s death in 1821 prompted a frenzy of creation and circulation of materials relating to him, a whirling international trade in objects, images, texts and memorabilia which has essentially never since ceased. Death masks were made, shipped to Europe, waylaid, stolen, copied, and taken around Latin America by one of his doctors. Portraits were exchanged and exhibited, caricatures continued to abound, and actors took on the mantle of the Emperor from the stage to the film set. Personal items belonging to Napoleon were gifted to friends and family, collected by his admirers, and displayed at public exhibitions around the world: his horse, the key to his room, his toothbrush. These items make national headline news to this day when they are rediscovered, are sold for monumental sums to contemporary collectors and serve as key advertising strategies for museums. Napoleonic items can be official or personal, serious or comical, luxury or disposable: the former emperor can be equally thought of as a monumental Neoclassical marvel in white marble, as Joaquin Phoenix, or as a tiny cartoon figure astride a fat pony \u2013 yet little work has so far been done to bring together these diverse cultural histories in conversation. We therefore invite researchers of all disciplines, and museum and heritage professionals, to reflect on the enduring material and visual legacy of Napoleon, what our interpretation and use of it means for the future as well as how it affects our understanding of the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possible themes for papers include:
\u2022 Napoleon in theatre, TV and film; in music; in poetry; in art, sculpture and drawing; in books, ephemera, printing, paratext
\u2022 Napoleon in exhibitions and museums: museum histories, interpretations of collections, and how objects are presented to the public, including in past, present and future events; how Napoleon is used in marketing strategies or public engagement
\u2022 Private collecting and the choices and agency of collectors, including by historians; the memorabilia trade both in the 19th century and up to today; Napoleonic tourism and the creation, looting or buying of souvenirs from significant places
\u2022 Gender, sexuality, and Napoleonic memory; involvement of women as collectors, curators, consumers
\u2022 Race and empire: critical histories and commentaries on Napoleonic representations
\u2022 Medical histories of Napoleonic objects
\u2022 Dress, fashion, appearance
\u2022 Home d\u00e9cor
\u2022 Religion and the macabre
\u2022 Animals and Napoleonic symbolism
\u2022 The \u2018golden\u2019 or \u2018rosy\u2019 vs. \u2018black\u2019 legend of Napoleon and ongoing critical interpretations
\u2022 Comedy and ridicule
\u2022 Romanticisation, neoclassical heroism, masculinity
\u2022 Circulation and object histories
\u2022 Re-enactment
\u2022 Public commemoration; plaques, monuments, iconoclasm
\u2022 Napoleon and antiquity<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please submit abstracts for short 15-minute papers, along with a short bio, to ImpMatWorkshop@gmail.com<\/a> by 13 June 2021. (Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words.) Following the workshop, we plan to pursue the publication of selected papers as a collected edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convenors: Dr Matilda Greig (Cardiff University) and Dr Nicole Cochrane (University of Exeter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confirmed keynote: Dr Ruth Scurr (University of Cambridge)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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