{"id":11418,"date":"2022-04-21T14:41:28","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T13:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/?p=11418"},"modified":"2022-05-30T15:30:43","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T14:30:43","slug":"imagining-dover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/imagining-dover\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Dover!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>An exciting new digital exhibition for the IHR Centenary!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-issuu wp-block-embed-issuu\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div data-url=\"https:\/\/issuu.com\/canterburychristchurchuniversity\/docs\/dover_final_pdf\" style=\"width: 640px; height: 457px;\" class=\"issuuembed\"><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.js\" async=\"true\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>In July 2021, a group of academics met at the National Trust White Cliffs of Dover site. Some of us had not met each other before, most of us had not met in-person for many months following a semester of lock-down teaching. It was a gloriously sunny day and we squinted at a new normal of testing and mask-wearing though I don\u2019t remember any elbow-bumping: this meeting was as much about wellbeing as it was about research. We came together as a group due to a shared interest in Dover. From different discipline-backgrounds, we were attracted to the history, the literary resonances and the imaginative possibilities of this place. The outcome of this meeting is this digital exhibition that draws together a range of responses to Dover: digital because, at the time, it was still impossible to plan anything face-to-face with any certainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2021\/07\/DSC01112.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10126\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2021\/07\/DSC01112.jpg 604w, https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2021\/07\/DSC01112-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px\" \/><figcaption>Walking towards Dover<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The exhibition is supported by the Institute of Historical Research, who celebrate their centenary this year with an Our Century festival. The IHR is \u2018the UK\u2019s national centre for history, dedicated to supporting historians of all kinds.\u2019 The Our Century festival celebrates \u2018history as a discipline in the past, present and future.\u2019 Our approach has been collaborative and interdisciplinary; the exhibition draws on the expertise of historians, geographers, literature scholars and creative practitioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Peppered across the exhibition are creative writing prompts by Dr Sonia Overall that invite an active audience response. For me, the most powerful of these prompts was the final one of \u2018Path lines\u2019 which has the instructions: \u2018Find a place where several paths meet and cross over. What happens when the paths meet?\u2019 Exciting things happen when disciplinary paths meet and cross over and I think this exhibition maps rich possibilities for further collaborative work on place-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The exhibition follows a broadly chronological approach and ranges from using wills to explore how medieval Dover inhabitants located their faith in gifts to religious institutions through to perilous journeys into revolutionary France by women writers in the late eighteenth century, to travelling along the Dover Road in Dickensian Kent, to Cold-War Soviet military mapping and a contemporary psycho-geographical walk tracing the route of the River Dour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2021\/07\/DSC01106.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10118\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2021\/07\/DSC01106.jpg 604w, https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2021\/07\/DSC01106-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px\" \/><figcaption>Finding Dover<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In each piece, Dover is both an actual and an imagined place. In her lecture, Professor Carolyn Oulton discusses the \u2018mobile landscapes\u2019 of Kent and through the innovative Digital Kent Maps project, explores the boundaries of the real and fictional as geography is reshaped to function symbolically in <em>Great Expectations<\/em>. This links to Dr Alex Kent\u2019s talk on the Soviet mapping of Dover and the ways the inclusion of anachronistic detail and military priorities provide a new perspective on a familiar landscape and reveal the industrial heritage of the town. For the psycho-geographer, Dover is shaped by the jerks of memory and association that the walk stimulates and similarly, for the Romantic women writers, for Dickens\u2019 David Copperfield and for the town\u2019s medieval inhabitants, intention, emotion, and life-choices are mapped onto Dover\u2019s streets and landmarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope that you will visit the exhibition and share your responses with us. We would love to hear from you: please use the form provided here <a href=\"https:\/\/eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.office.com%2Fr%2F8XknbjHF1m&amp;data=05%7C01%7Cclaire.bartram%40canterbury.ac.uk%7C98e51d5491254126069b08da421e1d2b%7C0320b2da22dd4dab8c216e644ba14f13%7C0%7C0%7C637894994341206653%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=nHyHl8kzTkCXVLEMymto%2FHc6E09VKDBcL%2Fj5Dc6H3po%3D&amp;reserved=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/forms.office.com\/r\/8XknbjHF1m<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An exciting new digital exhibition for the IHR Centenary!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6665,"featured_media":10122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,822,5394,5762,982,1029,817,2622,6230],"tags":[7597,461,8333,2785,3210,8066,9170,8889,2789],"class_list":["post-11418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic","category-blog-posts","category-exhibition","category-heritage","category-kent","category-middle-ages","category-news","category-second-world-war","category-victorian","tag-caroline-millar","tag-dover","tag-dr-alex-kent","tag-dr-claire-bartram","tag-dr-sheila-sweetinburgh","tag-dr-sonia-overall","tag-dr-susan-civale","tag-ihr-centenary-partnership","tag-professor-carolyn-oulton"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Sheila Sweetinburgh","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2021\/07\/DSC01107.jpg","postExcerpt":"An exciting new digital exhibition for the IHR Centenary!","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11418"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11858,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11418\/revisions\/11858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/kenthistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}