Plenum
23/05/2022
18:00 Uhr
Intensivseminar mit Petra McGillen und Marie-Eve Thérenty: „Small Forms of Eyewitnessing. Literary Reporting in the Early Age of Mass Media“
Dor24
Raum 1.201
Um Anmeldung unter stephan.braendle@hu-berlin.de oder maddalena.casarini.1@hu-berlin.de wird gebeten.
Our “Intensivseminar” will explore the literary and social functions of eyewitnessing by analyzing practices, formats and contexts of reporting during the early age of mass media (1850s-1920s). We will examine different practices of visual reporting in use before the late nineteenth-century advent of press photography, including practices that emerge in relation to telegraphy. We will also investigate the development of the reportage (especially in France) from its birth in the 1850s until the 1920s, especially in the journalistic production of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Questions this seminar will take up include: What kinds of knowledge circulate via (short) literary reports published in the newspaper? What aesthetic transformations of source materials—in particular between text and image, but also between different journalistic genres—occur? Which epistemic and aesthetic expectations do these texts fulfill—and which not? In what ways does the scale of the eyewitness account affect its modes of production and reception?
Presenters: Petra McGillen (Dartmouth)
Preparatory readings
- The Illustrated London News, No. 323, 1.7.1848 [extracts].
- Barnhurst, Kevin G., Nerone, John, Civic Picturing vs. Realist Photojournalism the Regime of Illustrated News, 1856-1901, in: Design Issues, 16,1, 2000, 59–79.
Schedule (ca. 6-8 p.m.)
| 5 min (18:15-18:20) | Welcome & introduction of speakers |
| 45 min (18:20-19:05) | Petra McGillen: “Sketched with an Oracular Pencil: Fake Eyewitnessing and Predictive Reporting in 19th-Century Visual News” |
| 45 min (19:05-19:50) | Discussion (about statement & texts) |
| Après | Small reception |