21 July 2022 | Conference Objects of Understanding, Flensburg, DE

Paper Presentation:

Jamilla Notebaard & Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves:

Projecting knowledge: the role of the lantern slide in academic and public lectures in the Netherlands 1900-1940.

Conference organized by Europa-Universität Flensburg.

The full program can be accessed here.

Abstract:

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the optical lantern was becoming more and more an ubiquitous teaching tool. This was the case for university lectures but also for illustrated public lectures, also known as lantern lectures, organized by a range of institutions and associations. In the Netherlands, even if the adoption of the technology was somewhat late, academic institutions developed dedicated spaces for lantern slide production and projection, such as the botanical laboratories of the state universities of Groningen, Leiden and Utrecht. In comparison, Dutch associations developed procedures to enable a wider access to lantern slide projection such as the creation of “lending offices” which coordinated the circulation of lantern slide sets during the lecture season. This paper will explore how these two different educational environments, the university and the public lecture, incorporated lantern slide projection as a fundamental aspect of their practice.

Our research is based on archival material such as recently rediscovered lantern slide collections, as well as digitized newspapers and other publications. These sources, objects and reports, enable us to reconstruct the historical practice of the illustrated lecture. Even though similar topics were discussed in academic and popular lectures, such as Astronomy or Art History, different strategies could be employed to contextualize the meaning of the projected image. By studying these objects within different educational environments, this research shows that the lantern slide was a versatile object capable of informing, persuading, demonstrating, proving, and, even, entertaining.