Nothing Happened

2021 · 6 citations

• Philosophy
• History
• Epistemology

The past is what happened. History is what we remember and write about that past, the narratives we craft to make sense out of our memories and their sources. But what does it mean to look at the past and to remember that "nothing happened"? Why might we feel as if "nothing is the way it was"? This book transforms these utterly ordinary observations and redefines "Nothing" as something we have known and can remember. "Nothing" has been a catch-all term for everything that is supposedly uninteresting or is just not there. It will take some—possibly considerable—mental adjustment before we can see Nothing as Susan A. Crane does here, with a capital "n." But Nothing has actually been happening all along. As Crane shows in her witty and provocative discussion, Nothing is nothing less than fascinating. When Nothing has changed but we think that it should have, we might call that injustice; when Nothing has happened over a long, slow period of time, we might call that boring. Justice and boredom have histories. So too does being relieved or disappointed when Nothing happens—for instance, when a forecasted end of the world does not occur, and millennial movements have to regroup. By paying attention to how we understand Nothing to be happening in the present, what it means to "know Nothing" or to "do Nothing," we can begin to ask how those experiences will be remembered. Susan A. Crane moves effortlessly between different modes of seeing Nothing, drawing on visual analysis and cultural studies to suggest a new way of thinking about history. By remembering how Nothing happened, or how Nothing is the way it was, or how Nothing has changed, we can recover histories that were there all along.

An Ontological Turn for the Medieval Books of Beasts: Environmental Theory from Premodern to Postmodern

Palgrave studies in animals and literature · 2020 · 2 citations

• Sociology
• Epistemology
• Philosophy

Photographs at/of/and Museums

Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 3 citations

• Visual arts
• Geography
• Art

Since the invention of photography, photographs have played many roles in museums, only one of which is to be objects on display. This chapter explores the dynamic and varied ways that photographs have been utilized by museums since the 1850s: as essential tools for the conservation and preservation of other museum objects; as elements of museum exhibition design and publicity; as digital components of museum collection and exhibition; and as exhibition objects. The chapter highlights contemporary art and anthropology exhibitions featuring Edward Curtis' photography in order to call into question the ways in which photographs are typically decontextualized in museum display and publicity. Photography in the digital age has further transformed museum practices and given rise to crowd-sourcing of both images and exhibitions, considered here as further evidence of evolving trends in museum practices, moving beyond seeing photographs as "merely" illustration for other museum objects.