British Printed Images to 1700: Integrating Visual Sources into Historical Practice

该项目将对1700年之前在英国生产的单页印刷品进行研究。它将重新推出这些印刷品的数字档案馆(www.bpi1700.org.uk)，该档案馆将在没有新资金的情况下关闭。公众宣传局的网络档案是在2006至2009年间使用服务器和其他软件构建的，这些软件现在已经过时了15年。这个项目将重新设计和重新启动档案，它是一代人以来研究早期现代英国(从本科生研究他们的学位论文到资深学者撰写专著)的重要资源。通过这样做，该项目继续向公众免费提供公众宣传局档案，并通过使用最新技术和额外的研究资源提高其可用性。该项目还将促进对档案馆11000张印刷品的研究。长期以来，历史学家一直不愿使用视觉资料，认为它们属于艺术历史学家，而且往往缺乏如何使用或阅读它们的培训。这种不情愿在最近几年开始减弱，早期现代和现代历史学家现在利用讽刺版画、海报和其他视觉材料来描述政治史。然而，对于社会和文化历史来说，情况并非如此。英国公众宣传局庞大的档案中的许多材料都没有经过研究，尽管它有可能告诉我们关于1500年至1700年间英国社会和文化史的重要信息。参与该项目的一个学者网络进行的研究将寻求将单张印刷品纳入社会和文化史。关于早期现代人对性别的态度，对男性和女性的描述告诉了我们什么？关于早期现代人对民族或种族的态度，来自其他地方或文化的人的表现告诉了我们什么？习俗和道德是如何在视觉上表现出来的，这些表现在维护或挑战传统方面起到了什么作用？关于刻板印象是如何产生和维持的，图像可以告诉我们很多事情。但它们也告诉了我们早期现代文化更模糊的方面。情绪是如何被理解和体验的？它是如何概念化社会秩序、等级和等级的？这个项目通过问一个简单但基本的问题来探索早期现代英国的视觉文化：图像能告诉我们哪些关于社会和文化历史的信息，而更多的传统历史记录不能？

This project will conduct research into single-sheet prints produced in Britain before 1700. It will relaunch a digital archive of those prints (www.bpi1700.org.uk) that will close without new funding. The BPI web archive was constructed between 2006 and 2009 using servers and other software that is now 15 years' out of date. This project will redesign and relaunch the archive, which has been an important resource for research of early modern Britain (from undergraduates researching their dissertations to senior academics writing monographs) for a generation. By doing so, the project continues to make the BPI archive freely available to the public and improves its usability through the use of up to date technology and additional research resources. The project will also promote research into the archive's 11,000 prints. Historians have long been reluctant to use visual sources, believing that they belong to Art Historians, and often lacking the training in how to use or read them. That reluctance has begun to wane in recent years, and early modern and modern historians now make use of satirical prints, posters, and other visual materials as they relate to political history. The same is not true for social and cultural history, however. Much of the material in the BPI's vast archive has not been subject to research, despite it having the potential to tell us vital things about the social and cultural history of Britain between 1500 and 1700. Research conducted by a network of scholars involved in this project will seek to integrate single-sheet prints into social and cultural history. What do depictions of men and women tell us about early modern attitudes to gender? What do representations of peoples from other places or cultures tell us about early modern attitudes to nationality or race? How were mores and morals represented visually, and what role did those representations have in maintaining or challenging conventions? Images have much to tell us about how stereotypes are created and sustained. But they also tell us about more nebulous aspects of early modern culture. How were emotions understood and experienced? How did it conceptualise social order, hierarchy, and rank? This project explores the visual culture of early modern Britain by asking a simple yet fundamental question: what do images tell us about social and cultural history that more traditional historical records do not?