BOF Sabbatical 2021-2022 - Kurt Vanhoutte.

This five-months sabbatical (1 September 2021 – 31 January 2022) allows me to work on two books. First and foremost, my aim is to produce a draft of a book on scientific fiction, Henri Robin and performing science in the nineteenth century. Henri Robin is a largely forgotten showman and demonstrator providing scientific entertainment throughout Europe for audiences to be both beguiled and informed. Robin stands out among the demonstrators of his generation because he was the first to use photographic magic lantern slide images and he probably also used the first three-lens projector, later "reinvented" in England as the groundbreaking Triunial. The book will address Robin's career in relation to changing ideas of theatricality, science and technology. I have probably assembled the biggest archive on Robin over the years, and I have published on this topic in academic journals, and hence it is possible to have a first draft ready by the end of my sabbatical on the basis of additional, targeted research in the archives. The book will be published by Brepols (TECHNE). Apart from that, I plan to write an outline of a book on recent Belgian theatre history with my colleague Karel Vanhaesebrouck (ULB) to be published with Routledge. We recently already wrote an article for the Routledge Companion on European Theatre and will expand this. The sabbatical would include two research stays, one at the Centre Alexandre Koyré in Paris, with science historian Charlotte Bigg (1-20 September) and another one at the Department of Design Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, with media historian and pioneering media archaeologist Erkki Huhtamo (1 – 28 November). Finally, as coordinator of the EOS project B-magic, I will follow up on the progress of the consortium and prepare the final conference of the project in Antwerp (4-7 May 2022).

Keywords:SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION

Disciplines:History of historical culture, Theatre and performance not elsewhere classified