{"id":5507,"date":"2024-09-15T22:45:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-15T22:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5507"},"modified":"2024-09-16T10:29:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T10:29:24","slug":"bars-presidents-fellowship-2024-report-archival-research-for-staging-the-orient-a-study-of-oriental-scenography-on-the-romantic-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5507","title":{"rendered":"BARS President’s Fellowship 2024 Report: Archival research for \u201cStaging the Orient: A Study of Oriental Scenography on the Romantic Stage\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In June 2020, the British Association for Romantic Studies announced its unequivocal support of the Black community<\/a>, its condemnation of all forms of racism and its commitment to practical action. In response to the enduring and systemic damage caused by racism, the BARS Executive commenced a programme of initiatives focused on the histories and literatures of People of Colour. Among these initiatives is the BARS President\u2019s Fellowship<\/em>. The 2024 Recipient of this award was Dr Yasser Shams Khan<\/strong>, whose Fellowship report is below: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This project, \u201cStaging the Orient\u201d, evolved out of my doctoral research on racial representations of black characters in Georgian-period Drama. As someone who was initiated into the magnificent world of late eighteenth-century theatricality, I became all too aware of Benjamin\u2019s thesis that \u201cthere is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism\u201d. Just as tales of civilization ride upon the back of barbaric conquests, and benevolent gestures disguise crude calculations, in a similar vein racial representations on stage perform affective attachments and desire which are simultaneously controlled and contained through mechanisms of othering. Along with black characters, the late eighteenth-century theatrical stage was replete with characters and settings from the Orient, and once I had completed my PhD, with its focus on blackness, I was curious to further explore the racial spectrum as it was performed on stage during the Romantic period. In retrospect, it seems that the historical circumstances in which I was working facilitated the direction of my research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, when I was still at Oxford, a number of graduates including myself were asked to give a flash talk on racism for a research seminar in Eighteenth Century Literature. I chose to speak about academic neutrality and what it means to us when confronted with issues that demand that we take a position. Failing to take a stand through scholarship is also a political stand and a potentially divisive one, which engages in an act of omission, a silencing of voices. This form of academic neutrality is equivalent to the slogan that became popular in the BLM protests: Silence is Violence. Such a sentiment is even more relevant today with what is going on in Gaza. Our silence is the death of Palestinians. I made a case then for \u201cpolitical\u201d approaches to literature arguing that our research is always already shaped by political objectives, whether conscious or unconscious. The way the question is posed, the methods of inquiry, and the criteria of what counts as a legitimate answer all have political implications. Because our discipline is defined by its historical context, limited by what is available, preserved, and documented, it requires critical strategies to cut through, to make visible, to hear the voices of protest that are drowned by the deafening silence of neutrality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I laid out two strategies that helped shape my own subsequent research on \u201cStaging the Orient\u201d. The first was to uncover archives that narrate an alternative account, challenging popular conceptions used by those in power to justify their present dominance. The assumption here is that the full story hasn\u2019t been told. There is always more to uncover. We just have to look deeper and further. I thus sought to explore how Muslim characters and scenarios from the Eastern Empires (Ottoman and Mughal) were dramatized on the British stage, advancing critical questions relating to identity, imperialism, and Orientalism. The story I wanted to explore was how critically overlooked technical innovations of stage designers and scene painters informed Oriental discourse and shaped the aesthetic mediation of contemporary political issues that embroiled a commercial empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second strategy was to consider how to get past dominant, disciplinary ways of seeing things as they are? I sought to break away from conventional disciplinary methods and explore methodologies that would allow me to make sense of set designs and scenic paintings, as well as the underlying perspectivism that overdetermined the spectatorial gaze in performances that embodied and depicted Oriental scenes. I had thought of using the available technologies of visualization which might help me better understand how to comprehend visual spaces as spaces of performance. This approach to the little explored visual-performative archive might offer an alternative way of understanding the Romantic period, which has been primarily interrogated through a study of its texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I had a project in mind which would focus on scenography rather than the conventional approach to actors and characters, and I was equipped with a somewhat experimental methodology that would combine archival research, technologies of visualization, and a theoretical framework that goes beyond semiotics into the reconstruction of the emotive feel of a place. But since 2021, after having completed my DPhil at Oxford, I was unemployed and under lockdown due to the Covid epidemic. I was also no longer in the UK. I needed funds to access the archives for this project to come into its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had been a member of BARS since 2017, having presented my paper on \u201cThe Political Valence of the Noble Savage\u201d at a BARS conference on Romantic Improvement<\/em> at the University of York. I was very much impressed by the Association\u2019s commitment to encouraging diversity in the discipline, evident in the range of topics covered in the conference panels as well the diversity of participating speakers. It was a thrill to encounter eminent scholars in person and the whole experience of the conference further encouraged me to challenge my understanding of Romanticism as it was taught to me. Knowing the support that BARS has repeatedly given to young scholars and early career academics, I applied for the BARS President\u2019s Fellowship in the hope that they would see the potential of my project on \u201cOriental Scenography\u201d. I was absolutely delighted to hear the news that I had been offered the 2024 BARS President\u2019s Fellowship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent my summer in the UK, primarily in London and Oxford, where I went through the Grieve Family Collection of Theatrical Designs stored in the Senate House Library, the British Library manuscripts, and the Bodleian Libraries, particularly the John Johnson Collection of Theatrical Ephemera and the F. B. Brady Collection at Christ Church Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I encountered a number of hurdles, but the primary one was that the British Library had suffered a cyberattack and so they were only accepting manual requests with a daily limit of eight items. In the limited time that I had, I had to prioritize which materials to look at and which to overlook. Much of their online material was inaccessible. The second hurdle was that the Theatre and Performance wing of the Victorian and Albert Museum were undergoing renovation and the material would only be available by spring next year. Despite these setbacks, I did manage to procure material that would be of great value to my project, particularly the large set designs stored in the Senate House Library and the extensive toy theatre archives at Christ Church Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since this was an archival trip, I was feverishly trying to make the most of the time by storing as many images pertaining to Oriental scenography as I was allowed to access. I had an upcoming NASSR conference in Washington DC and I wanted to present some of my findings in a paper on Tipu Sultan and the Anglo-Mysore wars as they were performed at Astley\u2019s Amphitheatre in the 1790s. This would be the first presentation of my project which would be credited to the support offered by BARS for facilitating the necessary archival research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the conference paper, \u201cTippoo Saib at Astley\u2019s Amphitheatre: Exploring the Scenic Atmosphere of Theatrical Orientalism\u201d, I sought to present how the phenomenological experience of such performances unsettles the otherwise stable significative understanding of Oriental discourse. By reading the evidence that I had procured during the archival trip visually, I attempted to create an imaginary map of the landscape and thus position the actors and objects in the play, visualizing their movements through the world constructed onstage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a quick summary then of what I attempted to do in my analysis of Astley\u2019s Tippoo performances is to highlight three things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The performative interactions of bodies with architectural design and the activation of space through movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Focus on perspectivism, viewpoints, and sightlines to figure in the spectator as an essential element of the set-design and as central to determine the politics of the [back]ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The narrative identity of spaces derived from the composition and movement of bodies within a scene through which I attempted to disclose the configuration\u2019s political and rhetorical force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To consider all these elements together is to take scenography as a means of disclosing the theatrical experience through the visualization and imaginative activation of space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sought the help of an architect, Zartaj Kamran Khan, who works at Sou Fujimoto Architects, to build 3D-models of Astley\u2019s Amphitheatre which you can see below. These models are based on the visual material that I had procured during my recent archival visit. Although this is still a work in progress, I have much hope for the project once I get around to organizing all the material I managed to gather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a final comment, I would like to take inspiration from my fellow Black academics and activists who have repeatedly said that one of the first steps towards creating a more inclusive community is to first identify the dominance of \u201cinvisible\u201d, \u201cneutral\u201d ways of seeing and doing things. We need to see the word \u201cneutrality\u201d as connected to words like neuter (to castrate, to cut out, to not offer the possibility of reproducing \u2013 alternative cultures, voices, ways of being and becoming); but also connected to words like neutralisation (a euphemism for destroying and killing). I am thus suggesting a politics of scholarship that moves beyond the ideal of neutrality of the nonpartisan sort. Rather, I would insist on recognizing the limits of our conceptual frameworks as anything but neutral and to extend the boundaries of our moral imagination to see radical alternatives in how to be human and how to reimagine our social reality and community and I hope our modest academic efforts might work towards this ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1: A Slide from my presentation at the NASSR conference in Washington DC depicting the 3D models of Astley’s Amphitheatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 2: AI-generated image of Astley’s using Midjourney showing the view from the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yasser Shams Khan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Yasser Shams Khan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at Qatar University. He has published articles in\u00a0Studies in Romanticism\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation\u00a0<\/em>and contributed a chapter to the forthcoming\u00a0The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race<\/em>. His areas of interest include the theatre and culture of the long eighteenth century, race and imperialism, and critical theory and aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contact details:\u00a0
ykhan@qu.edu.qa
yassershamskhan@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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