Crystal Lake
Sun, 04/01/2012
Thu, 05/31/2012
Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
Crystal returns to the center to complete her research on a book project titled “Curious Things: Artifacts in British Literature and Culture, 1660–1830.” It takes as its central concern eighteenth-century antiquarianism (an early form of archaeology) and examines the ways writers, artists, and collectors used artifacts to imagine and encode controversial narratives about the history of Britain’s political institutions. Chapters are organized thematically around the period’s most popularly collected artifacts: coins, manuscripts, weapons, jewels, and relics. Lake plans to spend most of her time in residence studying eighteenth-century depictions of military antiquities and histories of war in order to complete her chapter on weapons.