DH 8991/ENGL 8500: Introduction to Digital Humanities

v. 1. General introduction. Organizing the exhibition. Reactions to the proposed exhibition
v. 2. Reactions to the proposed exhibition (continued). Opening on 1 May 1851
v. 3. Guides to the exhibition and other material addressed to visitors. Visitors' accounts
v. 4. Visitors' accounts (continued). Perspectives on the exhibition. Closing ceremony and assessments. Index.

Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition is the first book to situate the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 in a truly global context. Addressing national, imperial, and international themes, this collection of essays considers the significance of the Exhibition both for its British hosts and their relationships to the wider world, and for participants from around the globe. How did the Exhibition connect London, England, important British colonies, and significant participating nation-states including Russia, Greece, Germany and the Ottoman Empire? How might we think about the exhibits, visitors and organizers in light of what the Exhibition suggested about Britain's place in the global community? Contributors from various academic disciplines answer these and other questions by focusing on the many exhibits, publications, visitors and organizers in Britain and elsewhere. The essays expand our understanding of the meanings, roles and legacies of the Great Exhibition for British society and the wider world, as well as the ways that this pivotal event shaped Britain's and other participating nations' conceptions of and locations within the wider nineteenth-century world.

This volume analyses British exhibitions of Middle Eastern (particularly ancient Egyptian and Persian) artefacts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – examining how these exhibitions defined British self image in response to the Middle Eastern ‘other’.
This study is an original interpretation of the exhibition space along intersectional constructionist lines, revealing how forces such as gender, race, morality and space come together to provide an argument for British supremacy. The position of museums as instruments of representation of display made them important points of contact between the British national imperialist scheme and the public. Displays in the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Burlington House provide a focus for analysis. Through the employment of a constructionist lens, the research outlines a complex relationship between British society and the Middle Eastern artefacts presented in museums during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This allows a dialogue to emerge which has consequences for both societies which is achieved through intersections of gender, race and morality in space.

This book examines the Great Exhibition as a decisive moment in the formation of a capitalist world picture. In so doing it foregrounds a vision of peace and progress which took hold of British society, within the Crystal Palace and beyond. It emphasizes too that this Victorian understanding of global order legitimized imperial ambition.

In May 1853, Charles Dickens paid a visit to the "savages at Hyde Park Corner," an exhibition of thirteen imported Zulus performing cultural rites ranging from songs and dances to a "witch-hunt" and marriage ceremony. Dickens was not the only Londoner intrigued by these "living curiosities": displayed foreign peoples provided some of the most popular public entertainments of their day. At first, such shows tended to be small-scale entrepreneurial speculations of just a single person or a small group. By the end of the century, performers were being imported by the hundreds and housed in purpose-built "native" villages for months at a time, delighting the crowds and allowing scientists and journalists the opportunity to reflect on racial difference, foreign policy, slavery, missionary work, and empire.   Peoples on Parade provides the first substantial overview of these human exhibitions in nineteenth-century Britain. Sadiah Qureshi considers these shows in their entirety--their production, promotion, management, and performance--to understand why they proved so commercially successful, how they shaped performers' lives, how they were interpreted by their audiences, and what kinds of lasting influence they may have had on notions of race and empire. Qureshi supports her analysis with diverse visual materials, including promotional ephemera, travel paintings, theatrical scenery, art prints, and photography, and thus contributes to the wider understanding of the relationship between science and visual culture in the nineteenth century.   Through Qureshi's vibrant telling and stunning images, readers will see how human exhibitions have left behind a lasting legacy both in the formation of early anthropological inquiry and in the creation of broader public attitudes toward racial difference.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 is routinely portrayed as a manifestly secular event which was confined to celebrating the success of science, technology, and manufacturing in the mid-Victorian age. Geoffrey Cantor presents an innovative reappraisal of the Exhibition, demonstrating that it was widely understood by contemporaries to possess a religious dimension and that it generated controversy among religious groups. Prince Albert bestowed legitimacy on the Exhibition by proclaiming it to be a display of divine providence whilst others interpreted it as a sign of the coming Apocalypse. With anti-Catholic feeling running high following the recent 'papal aggression', many Protestants roundly condemned those exhibits associated with Catholicism and some even denounced the Exhibition as a Papist plot. Catholics, for their part, criticized the Exhibition as a further example of religious repression. Several evangelical religious organisations energetically rose to the occasion, considering the Exhibition to be a divinely ordained opportunity to make converts, especially among 'heathens' and foreigners. Jews generally welcomed the Exhibition, as did Unitarians, Quakers, Congregationalists, and a wide spectrum of Anglicans - but all for different reasons. Cantor explores this diversity of perception through contemporary sermons, and, most importantly, the highly differentiated religious press.