REFRAMING FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY University of Toronto, Canada, SEPTEMBER 28–30, 2017 A conference hosted by the Toronto Photography Seminar What is family photography? Scholars have often understood the genre as simply snapshots of domestic scenes—images  that reflect and produce normative notions of family. Yet, family photographs are more complex than we think: they can also include images taken by a wide spectrum of producers, including the press and the state; they frequently circulate between private and public spheres, linking personal memories with national and even global histories; and, just as importantly, they don’t just illustrate families, but also shape the very idea of family, as racialized and gendered social structures. Foundational thinkers including Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Jo Spence, Marianne Hirsch, Martha Langford, Deborah Willis, and others, have offered influential terms for investigating family photographs, respectively, as: an affective punctum; middlebrow art; means of reinforcing domestic ideology; conduit for postmemory; integrally […]

'Populism in historical perspective'   Symposium  2nd November 2016, European Institute, University College London   The last decade has seen the rise of politicians, parties and governments to whom the label 'populist' can usefully be applied. This is true not only in Europe, but also in North and South America, Turkey, India and elsewhere. British media responses to this global shift have focused on the 'Brexit' referendum result and the short term consequences of the 2008 financial crash. There has been less interest in historicising these phenomena or locating them in an analysis of twentieth and twenty first century democracy. Yet this would be a useful endeavour, involving study not only of twentieth century populists like Pierre Poujade or Juan Perón, but also a wider project investigating the development of modern mass society since the late nineteenth century.   The UCL European Institute and UCL Centre for Transnational History therefore […]