A seminar by Charlotte Colding Smith (German Maritime Museum, Bremerhaven) at The University of Melbourne
Image: Joachim Camerarius, image 63 from Symbolorum et Emblematum Centuriae Tres... cum Figuris
Aeneis, [Heidelberg]: Typis Voegelinianis, 1605. Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek.
Date: Thursday 26 September 2019
Time: 4:15–5:15pm
Venue: Dulcie Hollyock Room, Ground floor Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne (interactive map: https://maps.unimelb.edu.au/parkville/building/177/baillieu)
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Perceptions of and emotions surrounding whales changed significantly between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Whales have been seen as fearsome creatures connoting danger and the possible outbreak of war, as awesome characters in sea adventures, as necessary commodities to be processed into soaps and margarine, and finally as embodiments of peace who are in need of protection. All of these attitudes are reflected in the conventionalized imagery of the whale—in early modern emblems, in nineteenth- and twentieth-century advertisements, and in the contemporary logos of the anti-whaling movement. Such images appear in emblem books, in biblical illustrations, on product packaging, in official pamphlets and in today’s electronic media. This paper will highlight the adaptability of the whale emblem, the types of whales depicted and the changing, often conflicting, emotional reactions they inspire.
Charlotte Colding Smith completed her PhD at the The University of Melbourne in 2010 and published the resulting monograph as Images of Islam, 1453–1600: Turks in Germany and Central Europe (2014). She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel), the British Museum, the University of Vienna and the Getty Museum (Los Angeles). Since 2016, she has been engaged as a curator and researcher at the German Maritime Museum, Bremerhaven, with special focus on the whaling collections. Her current research focuses on whales and related objects in collections history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.