Writing the Object, Writing the World

What are the challenges and possibilities of placing a single work of art at the centre of an entire study? How might sustained attention to visual and material form illuminate different histories and engage a range of conceptual methods? This seminar will reflect on the author’s recent book, which focused on a strange and little-known photograph of relic objects from the American Civil War to examine how death, mourning and martyrdom are culturally imagined; what inequities are revealed; and the new role of photography as evidence for the crimes of war.

Speaker biography

Jennifer Raab is a professor of the history of art at Yale University where she specialises in the arts of the United States and the history of photography. She is the author of Relics of War: The History of a Photograph (Princeton University Press, 2024), awarded the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association, and Frederic Church: The Art and Science of Detail (Yale University Press, 2015). She is currently at work on a co-authored book with Siobhan Angus, What Lies Beneath an Empire: A Visual History of Guano, Bones, and Rock. Her scholarship has been supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Wyeth Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. At Yale, she is one of the founding members of the Environmental Humanities Program.

Sensitive content: depictions of death and war

Image Caption: Relics of Andersonville Pr*son, June 1866. Albumen silver print, 8 11/16 × 7 7/16 in (22.1 × 18.9 cm). Printed and distributed by Brady & Co. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gilman Collection, Purchased, Joseph M. Cohen Gift, 2005.

✖ Level access

✔ Livestreamed

✔ Recorded

✔ Hearing loop available (please contact [email protected])

✔ Closed caption on Zoom

✖ BSL

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