History in Practice

Chair: Sarah Daw

“‘Coblers and Broome-men,Taylers and Loome[:]men’: the grouping of occupational descriptors in the Pepysian ballads” by Edward Taylor

The social and occupational structure of early modern England has received significant attention from historians. However, much research has focused on contemporary writing on social hierarches and conceptual divisions, representations of society that have been criticised as idealist, proscriptive, and unhelpful. More recently, there have been attempts to examine the occupational relationships manifest in more archival sources. However, these investigations can be criticised for assuming that modern systems of occupational classification can describe the grouping of early modern occupations. Therefore, any attempt to examine early modern occupational structure must pay attention to society beyond the gentry whilst grounding any classification in contemporary grouping and ordering. The listing of occupational and social descriptors in early modern ballads offers one possible avenue. Ballads existed in the overlap between oral and print culture and speaking of and to plebeian society. This paper will analyse the grouping of occupational descriptors in the ballads collected by Samuel Pepys. It will investigate which occupations are associated with each other, and examine the strength and consistency of these associations over time. To do this, it will quantitatively analyse the physical distance between occupational descriptors within texts and by qualitatively evaluate the strength of the connections between them.

“‘Howdy Partner/Hail Caesar’: The Use of Accents in Contemporary Ancient Historical Epics” by Chris Davies

During the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, Hollywood tradition dictated that heroic protagonists in Ancient Historical Epics conventionally spoke with an American accent while the villains were associated with English received-pronunciation. Following the revitalisation of the genre with Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), subsequent epics from Troy (2004) to The Eagle (2011) have employed a variety of English-language accents in depicting classical cultures. Is this a result of economic, cultural or generic changes within the epic? A method of developing character identity? Or perhaps it is a method to draw attention to a specific interpretation of the film?
In this presentation, I aim to discuss this varied use of accents and what effects they have on our reading of contemporary ancient historical epics.

“Voices and Engagement in the Modern Museum” by Will Barrett

In the 21st Century, emerging trends in technology are indicative of the changing nature in the way we communicate through the sharing of information, connecting with peers, learning and even socialising. Therefore this paper aims to display some of the ways in which digital technology is changing and adapting the framework of communicating historical information in the 21st century museum. Speaking about how museum curatorship and academic research in this area has developed in the modern era, this paper will emphasize how digital technology has began to silence the monolithic voice of the museum, in order to listen to and provide a greater variety of voices, perspectives and experiences related to our past and our shared heritage. In support of this, we will look at examples of digital projects being developed by the author in a collaborative project between the University of Exeter and RAMM (Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery), to highlight how museums are utilising digital technology in order to adapt to user needs and expectations in the modern age of new media and new literacy, and to create personalised user experiences which can then in turn be shared to create a more democratic and pluralised heritage.