Paper Presentation: Frank Kessler: Prospects for a History of Media Dispositifs How can we make the concept of “dispositif” productive for media historiographies? What perspectives does such an approach open up, compared to traditional media histories? How do we need to conceive of media dispositifs to be able to study their multiple histories? These are…

Paper Presentation: Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk: “La multi-modalité de la lanterne optique et ses reflets dans le cinéma des années 1910 en France.” France is a country with a long tradition of lantern projections, which also had an impact on the emerging medium of cinema. Non-fiction film, in particular has many links with the…

Presentation of Working Paper: Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves: The lantern lecture season: Haarlem 1925-1926. By the mid-1920s lantern projection was starting to become a commonly available technology across the Netherlands and the public lantern lecture became an important staple of the Dutch social event calendar during the winter months. This case study aims to reconstruct…

Panel Presentation: The Emergence of the “Knowledge Populariser” between the Fairground and the Lecture Hall (1820s – 1890s) Contributions by Sabine Lenk (Antwerp University): The Ellemberg family and the transfer of knowledge Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves (Utrecht University): From Professor of Magic to Science Popularizer: Mapping the performances of L.K. Maju between 1850 and 1886…

Video Presentation: Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk: The Voice of the Lecturer. Image-Word Relations in Optical Lantern and Early Film Performances When the new medium of film emerged in the 1890s, it was often seen as an addition to already existing screen practices, as is witnessed by, among others, the change of title of one…

Video Presentation: Nico de Klerk: Lantern Readings. What do they do? In my brief paper I raise a few questions regarding lantern readings, the printed brochures that were to a greater or lesser extent the basis of the spoken element of photographically illustrated lectures and provided continuity and coherence to a sequence of projected lantern…

Article (in Dutch), written by Eleá de la Porte and published in Geschiedenis Magazine. The article features an interview with Frank Kessler and Klaas de Zwaan in which they discuss their research on the magic lantern between the 1830s and World War II, from entertainment to propaganda and education. Van aanstormende spoken tot levende vissen…

Presentation of Working Paper: Jamilla Notebaard: The ‘Art’ of the Projected Image. The role of the optical lantern in the establishment of art history as an academic discipline at Dutch universities.

Presentation of Working Paper: Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves: The Dutch ‘Polytechnic’: the Illustrated Public Lectures of L. K. Maju (1823-1886) Detail of visualization: spatial distribution of Maju’s performances.  

Article (in Dutch), written by Marjolein Overmeer. This article features an interview with Frank Kessler and focuses on the use of the magic lantern for knowledge communication. Lantaarn was het eerste visuele massamedium Hoe de ‘Laterna Magica’ de collegezalen veroverde in de negentiende eeuw The article can be found here.