1. Understand the organising concepts of a Global Enlightenment, and of Romanticism as combining the arts and sciences.
Knowledge & Understanding; Enquiry

2. Understand the specific concept formations and practices of ‘nature’ in the context of exploration, race and empire.
Knowledge & Understanding; Analysis

3. Identify and research a cultural artefact ‘encounter’, and present in a poster format
Application; Communication

4. Analyse one of the five ‘arenas’ of ‘nature’ presented in the module through a case-study using module reading and appropriate additional research
Application; analysis; communication

Cultural artefact ‘encounter’ poster 500 words equivalent
Essay assignment 1500 words


The cultural artefact ‘encounter’ poster draws on LOs 1,2,3
The essay assignment draws on LOs 1,2,4

The module starts with recent work that stresses a ‘Global Enlightenment’ (Outram).
Rather than a ‘Western’ Enlightenment being diffused wholesale across the world, there were a series of cross-cultural encounters that were constitutive of Enlightenment thinking, with ‘zones of contact’ and the co-production of knowledge at the so-called ‘periphery’.

The module also draws on new approaches to Romanticism in cross-cultural contexts that spanned both the arts and sciences. Across the Enlightenment and Romanticism new concepts of nature were developed and deployed within a context of science, race (‘a science of man’), and empire.

The module examines five analytical ‘arenas’ of nature, but in practice these could overlap and interact.
Indicative examples of how these are explored in the module may include the following:
Productive nature - Kew Gardens and Sir Joseph Hooker; steam-engines and Caribbean slavery sugar plantations

Exotic nature - Joseph Banks and Tahiti; Marianne North
Colonial nature - Sir William Jones in India, language, law and custom; the ‘great arc’ mapping of the Indian sub-continent and the customs ‘great hedge’; the ‘science of man’ as comparative ethnography
Romantic nature - Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of Nature and Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior of Africa; Scientific exploration travel writing as a genre
‘Nature Display’d’ (Jordanova) – Sir Hans Sloane and his collections from Jamaica, the British Museum and the Natural History Museum.

The module concludes with reflections on cross-cultural encounters and multiple modernities.

The module will be delivered through a combination of:

(a) Workshops that will comprise tutor introductions to theoretical concepts and the case-studies, group discussion, and group study of primary source extracts, written and visual.

(b) independent learning or guided reading from the module bibliography and identifying relevant academic reading beyond the initial reading list

(c) Assignment preparation for planning, researching, poster preparation and essay writing

Brunt, Peter & Thomas, N. et al. (2018) Oceania. Royal Academy of Arts: London.
Drayton, R. (2000) Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the 'Improvement' of the World: Science, British Imperialism and the Improvement of the World.
Driver, F. (2001) Geography Militant: Cultures of exploration and empire. Blackwell: Oxford.
Fulford, T. & Lee, D. & Kitson, P. (eds.) (2004) Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era: Bodies of knowledge, CUP: Cambridge.
Holmes, R. (2009) The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science. Harper Press: London.
Kennedy, Dane (ed.) (2014) Reinterpreting Exploration: The West in the world. OUP: Oxford.
Ogborn, Miles (2011) Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550-1800. CUP: Cambridge [Cambridge studies in historical geography 41].
Outram, D. (2013, 3rd edn.) The Enlightenment. CUP: Cambridge. [esp. ch. 5 ‘Exploration, cross-cultural contact, and the ambivalence of the Enlightenment’, pp.54-66].
Pain, Stephanie [5th May, 2007], ‘Joseph Hooker’, New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2129916-joseph-hooker-the-travelling-man-who-became-emperor-of-botany/ [5th May, 2007, online] {accessed 28.2.19}
Park, M. [2002] Travels in the Interior [Districts] of Africa (Classics of World Literature) [Bernard Waites (Introduction)] Wordsworth Editions: Ware, Herts., UK.
[RGB Kew] (2018) Marianne North: The Kew Collection. RGB Kew: London.
Sloan, K. (ed.) (2004) Enlightenment: Discovering the world in the eighteenth century. British Museum: London.
Smith, Alison (2015) Artists and Empire: Facing Britain's Imperial Past. Tate Publishing: London.
Thomas, Nicholas (2010) Islanders: The Pacific in the age of empire. Yale Univ. Press: New Haven & London.
von Humboldt, A. (2016) Views of Nature [Ed. Jackson, S.T. & Walls, L.D.] Univ of Chicago Press: Chicago.
Weaver, S. (2015) Exploration: A very short introduction. OUP: Oxford. [esp. ch’s 5 ‘Exploration and Enlightenment’ and 6. ‘Exploration and Empire’, pp.62-82 & 83-99].
Wulf, A. (2016) The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science. John Murray: London

High quality teaching space with appropriate range of audio-visual facilities
Library books, journals, online books and journals
Box of Broadcasts
Blackboard

None