Curating the Crimea: The Cultural Afterlife of a Conflict

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This project explores the representation of the Crimean War (1854-1856) from the war's outbreak to the present. The afterlives of this conflict began even while it was ongoing; new forms of war correspondence and front-line photography produced instant history and commemorative industries were quick to gather momentum, producing mini-biographies of military heroes (including George Ryan's 'The Lives of our Heroes of the Crimea', 1855), and collectables such as chinaware and commemorative statues. The project begins with a detailed examination of the National Army Museum's substantial holdings of such materials, tracing the different attitudes and responses to this war from its outset. The NAM's archives offer much scope to re-examine the origins of those issues that have come to inform attitudes to the Crimean War ever since; attitudes which, in historiographical terms, develop from two opposing positions. The project will examine the potent legacies of the condemnatory and justificatory response, the former vividly expressed by The Times' journalist William Howard Russell, the latter promoted by the first great historian of the war, Alexander Kinglake. It will then explore a number of key moments in the afterlife of this war, beginning with Queen Victoria's much recorded visit to the wounded soldiers at Chatham in 1855, proceeding by way of the increasing commemoration and eventual cult of the Charge of the Light Brigade, taking in the acclaimed NAM exhibition of 2004-5, and ending 160 years after the outbreak of the war. It will assess the ways in which the presentation of this historical moment shifts in response to changing attitudes towards war, violence and nationhood. 'Curating' indicates a central focus on the role that exhibitions have played in the critical (re)shaping of responses to this conflict. This element of the project draws on the expertise of NAM supervisor, Dr Massie, who curated the recent exhibition, and upon the existing collaboration between the VSC and the School of Museum Studies at Leicester on a project entitled 'Curating the Victorians'. This focus provides a new dimension to the study of the Crimea, through a recognition of the significance of museums and other cultural institutions in producing modern conceptions of the conflict. 'Curating' here, though, is also used in a much looser sense to encompass a wide range of forms through which the war is re'written' and commemorated, including textual forms (journalism, life writing and literature), art, photography, film and statuary. Work on the literary reimaginaing of the war draws upon the expertise of the academic supervisor, Dr Furneaux, who is currently working on the representation of masculinity in this conflict. This truly interdisciplinary collaboration, then, both depends on the archival materials of NAM and on the specific expertise offered by this combination of supervisors and institutions.The project will draw on existing work in a number of disciplines, such as that by Matthew Lalumia, Ulrich Keller, Orlando Figes, Hugh Small and Stefanie Markovits. It will add a unique study of the museum context, and develop the idea of 'afterlife', or 'myth and memory' treated in brief, by Markovits and Figes respectively, in an afterword or epilogue. As with the CDA supervised by Furneaux between the VSC and the Charles Dickens Museum, now in its completion year, the project is intended to provide the student with both a focused area of investigation and with the space to develop their own intellectual agenda. The student may wish to focus on a number of key personalities from the conflict, tracing the re-presentation of Lord Raglan, Captain Nolan and Florence Nightingale through time and different institutional contexts. Alternatively, they may prefer a structure that focuses on the key mythologies of the conflict, the charge of the light bri