Abstract:
The “dusty archives” formula provokes and irritates, but why does it still seem to stick? My paper considers some of its implications for conducting research in 19th century cultural studies, to finally focus on a particular archive where dust really matters: the lantern slide collection of the Institute for Scientific Projection founded by Franz Stoedtner in 1895.
Ilinca Iurascu works at the intersection of cultural studies and media theory, with particular focus on histories of materiality and negotiations between technology and literature. She is currently coediting a collection on the cultural history of inventories in the German long 19th century (De Gruyter, 2024).