Alfred-Louis Brunet-Debaines, (French, 1845–c. 1935), College Interior, from the series Scenes of Oxford and Cambridge, c. 1880. Etching, 14 1/8 x 10 ¼ in. University acquisition, 1965.
New Perspectives Talk
Laura Evers, PhD candidate in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences, discusses a selection of late nineteenth-century etchings and engravings made by French, British, and American printmakers. Pastoral and Gothic motifs dominate these college-town prints of Oxford and Cambridge (i.e., Oxbridge). Evers considers how some scenes depict communal, varied uses of space, while other scenes suggest a closed-off intellectual environment. This contrast also underpins dark academia, a term first coined on the internet by artistic communities to describe moody campus aesthetics. From nineteenth-century printmaking to twenty-first-century digital self-fashioning, this talk asks: how have artists shaped our understanding of who and what university spaces are for? A question as relevant today as it was centuries ago.
Free and open to the public.