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

该项目将对1700年前英国生产的单张版画进行研究。它将重新启动这些印刷品的数字档案（www.bpi1700.org.uk），该档案将在没有新资金的情况下关闭。BPI网站档案是在2006年到2009年之间建立的，使用的服务器和其他软件现在已经过时15年了。这个项目将重新设计和重新启动档案馆，它一直是研究早期现代英国的重要资源（从本科生研究他们的论文到高级学者撰写专著）。通过这样做，该项目继续向公众免费提供BPI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。该项目还将促进对该档案馆1.1万份印刷品的研究。长期以来，历史学家一直不愿使用视觉资料，认为它们属于艺术史学家，而且往往缺乏如何使用或阅读它们的培训。近年来，这种不情愿已经开始减弱，早期的现代和现代历史学家现在使用讽刺印刷品，海报和其他视觉材料，因为它们与政治史有关。然而，对于社会和文化史来说，情况并非如此。尽管有可能告诉我们有关1500年至1700年间英国社会和文化史的重要信息，但BPI庞大档案中的许多材料尚未成为研究对象。由参与该项目的学者组成的网络进行的研究将寻求将单张印刷品与社会和文化历史相结合。对男性和女性的描绘告诉我们早期现代人对性别的态度是什么？来自其他地方或文化的人的表现告诉我们早期现代人对国籍或种族的态度是什么？风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习俗方面发挥了什么作用？图像可以告诉我们很多关于刻板印象是如何产生和维持的。但它们也告诉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？它是如何将社会秩序、等级和等级概念化的？这个项目通过提出一个简单而基本的问题来探索近代早期英国的视觉文化：关于社会和文化历史，图像告诉了我们什么是传统历史记录所没有告诉我们的？

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 The BPI web archive was constructed between 2006 and 2009 using servers and other software that is now 15 years' out of date.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?