New Book | Masculinity and Danger on the Grand Tour
Distributed by The University of Chicago Press:
Sarah Goldsmith, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour (London: University of London Press, 2021), 200 pages, ISBN: 978-1912702213 (cloth), $55 / ISBN: 978-1912702220 (paper), $35.
The Grand Tour, a customary trip through Europe undertaken by British nobility and wealthy landed gentry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, played an important role in the formation of contemporary notions of elite masculinity. Through an examination of testimonies written by Grand Tourists, tutors, and their families, Sarah Goldsmith argues that the Grand Tour educated young men in a wide variety of skills, virtues, and vices that extended well beyond polite society.
Goldsmith demonstrates that the Grand Tour was a means of constructing Britain’s next generation of leaders. Influenced by aristocratic concepts of honor and inspired by military-style leadership, elite society viewed experiences of danger and hardship as powerfully transformative and therefore as central to constructing masculinity. Scaling mountains, volcanoes, and glaciers, and even encountering war and disease, Grand Tourists willingly tackled a variety of perils. Through her study of these dangers, Goldsmith offers a bold revision of eighteenth-century elite masculine culture and the critical role the Grand Tour played within it.
Sarah Goldsmith is a lecturer in urban and material culture history at the University of Edinburgh, having previously held a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of Leicester.
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Hazarding Chance: A History of Eighteenth-Century Danger
2 Military Mad: War and the Grand Tour
3 Wholesome Dangers and a Stock of Health: Exercise, Sport, and the Hardships of the Road
4 Fire and Ice: Mountains, Glaciers, and Volcanoes
5 Dogs, Servants, and Masculinities: Writing about Danger and Emotion on the Grand Tour
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
Call for Papers | Making Masculinities: Material Culture and Gender
From ArtHist.net:
Making Masculinities: Material Culture and Gender in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
University of Edinburgh, 6 May 2022
Proposals due by 1 March 2022
Research into the intersection of material culture and masculinity has steadily increased as scholars across disciplines choose to use material culture as a conceptual point of departure. The Material and Visual Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Research Cluster at the University of Edinburgh aims to provide a space to continue the conversation. The cluster will host a one-day workshop fostering interdisciplinary discussion on the material approaches to historic ideas about gender through material culture. This workshop is spread over a series of formats to diversify how participants may interrogate this material. The day will include several presentations from PhD and Early Career Researchers, a keynote and a workshop for attendees led by Dr Sarah Goldsmith (University of Edinburgh).
To that end, we seek proposals for 10-minute papers that explore how material culture manifest various, competing, and complementary, expressions and definitions of masculinity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We are particularly interested in the myriad relationships between people and things, interrogating issues of making, consumption, exchange, and agency. We welcome contributions from researchers and museum professionals from fields, including but not limited to Art History, History, Literature, and Anthropology, English Literature, Archaeology.
Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 250 words, with a short biography (max 100 words) to materialcultureresearcheca@ed.ac.uk by the 1 March. Some travel bursaries will be available to assist speaker attendance. Please inquire for further information.
The workshop is kindly supported by ECA and History of Gender and Sexualities Research Group (Edinburgh).
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