WEEK 2 - SHOW AND TELL - Tuesday 30th April, 5.15pm (FAB 5.49)

• Dr David Coates (SCAPVC) "The Material Traces of Britain’s Amateur Theatrical Past (1780-1914)"

In this show-and-tell session, David will share his private collection which contains an array of materials that document a history of amateur theatre in Britain pre-1914. It includes playbills, acting manuals, newspaper cuttings, prints and manuscript items. Alongside this he’ll discuss a range of findings from archives and collections across Britain and the USA to highlight the historiographical challenges of using some of this material and of researching the amateur theatrical past.

• Dr Federica Coluzzi (SMLC) "Dante…di giorno in giorno: Family History and Printed Ephemera in nineteenth-century Italy"

In the late nineteenth century, Italian women writers entered the overwhelmingly masculine and fiercely competitive field of Dante studies by authoring a vast and diverse body of works. Along with handbooks, translations, critical studies and creative adaptations, they contributed to the wider popularisation of Dante’s works through printed ephemera such as maps, diaries and calendars launched on the market by major publishes. Eugenia Levi’s Dante…di giorno in giorno presents Dante quotations, translated in French, German and English, for each day. First published in 1893, it went through three consecutive editions with Loescher & Seeber, before being re-issued in a new miniature format in 1903. In this seminar, I will invite participants to engage in a collaborative material study of personal copy of Levi’s book, paying particular attention to the marginalia inscribed in its pages to reflect on its intergenerational uses as a visitors’ book and sentiment album within a family from Trentino Alto Adige.