Loader, Alison Reiko (2018) Willful Spectacles: The Splendid Camera Obscuras & Popular Observatories of Miss Maria Short. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
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Abstract
Histories of old media generally locate women on view and in the audience, but rarely position them as owners or operators in control of a screen. An archival study of the forgotten founding of Edinburgh’s Camera Obscura by Maria Theresa Short addresses this shortcoming and explores a device that is itself marginalized by media scholarship. Whereas most accounts abstract the camera obscura as a teleological forerunner and foundational component of inscriptive optical media, or as a metaphor of disembodied and distantiated vision, they overlook its use as a nineteenth-century exhibition apparatus, especially in connection to women and scientific spectacles. Yet one of the foremost and oldest purpose-built attractions in Edinburgh boasts an extraordinary history that speaks directly to such absences. In a towertop walk-in optical device, spectators stand in the dark around a touchable tabular screen while operators manipulate the capture and projection of a live, vivid and moving image of the city, which they present as a virtual guided tour. My research, pursued from a perspective of feminist media studies, explores how an unknown but willful spinster came to display this splendid apparatus and exhibit “the sublime truths of science” before the mid-nineteenth-century emergence of public museums and in defiance of municipal leaders, who would see to the demolition of her first venture. It comprises an in-depth inspection of Scottish archives that details the tactics, tensions and controversies surrounding the mysterious Miss Short and her popular observatories, and uncovers a history of scientific ambition and struggle that helps illustrate the culture in which they operated. Like the optical devices it investigates, “Willful Spectacles” reveals a complex and miniaturized monad that stands in for a shifting world where public space, its views and viewers were gendered, classed, and open to contestation.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Communication Studies |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
| Authors: | Loader, Alison Reiko |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | Ph. D. |
| Program: | Communication |
| Date: | February 2018 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Sawchuk, Kim |
| Keywords: | camera obscura, feminist media history, microhistory, nineteenth-century Edinburgh, popularization and professionalization, science and spectacle, screen studies |
| ID Code: | 983807 |
| Deposited By: | ALISON R LOADER |
| Deposited On: | 05 Jun 2018 14:15 |
| Last Modified: | 05 Jun 2018 14:15 |
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