As we prepare for the publication of Volume 10 this month, we here at Ceræ wanted to ensure that we also continued introducing you to the wonderful authors from our previous volume. In light of this, our next ‘meet the author’ from Volume 9 is Samantha Happé, a PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Teaching Fellow in Art History at the Univeristy of Melbourne. Samantha’s research interests include visual and material culture, diplomatic gifting, and the ancien régime.
Her article, ‘Almanacs Illustrating Extraordinary Embassies During the Reign of the Sun King‘, argues that the almanacs produced in eighteenth-century France ‘were an effective tool in disseminating knowledge of important events of the Sun King’s reign’. These almanacs utilised a ‘conscious continuity of visual motifs’ that ‘served to enhance the legibility of the depicted diplomatic exchanges, reinforcing the public demonstration and expression of Louis XIV’s magnificence – or gloire‘. These almanacs can be read, Happé argues, as ‘a burgeoning form of news media during late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century France’.
READ HAPPÉ’S ARTICLE HERE
- Where can we find you on social media?
I post intermittently on Twitter, but I often forget I have an account there.
- What projects are you currently working on (if you can divulge!)?
This year my main objective is to finish my thesis and get that submitted! However, I’m also working on a chapter in a volume edited by the wonderful Alex Burchmore that will be published through Bloomsbury – ‘Material Selves: Entangled Biographies of People and Things’. My chapter is called ‘Refashioning the Khil’a in Safavid Persia and early modern Europe’, and I will be looking at how the robe of honour mediated communication as it moved through different cultural contexts. I also have an article called ‘Persian Mumia: a Kingly Gift and Miraculous Cure-All’ that’s under review, so stay tuned!
- What are you currently reading for fun?
At the moment I only have a small amount of spare brain power for reading for fun, so I’m mostly reading fiction books. I’m currently halfway through ‘The Priory of the Orange Tree’ by Samantha Shannon that is a high fantasy novel that is quite excellent so far.
- What is a book that you would recommend to someone who reads your article in Ceræ and wants to learn more?
There is an excellent catalogue that came out of an exhibition from 1995 called ‘Les effets du soleil: almanachs du règne de Louis XIV’ by Maxime Préaud. Rebecca Zorach’s chapter ‘An Idolatry of the Letter: Time, Devotion, and Siam in the Almanacs of the Sun King’ published in 2012 in Ut Pictura Meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500 – 1700 is a great examination in the plethora of almanacs that were released in the wake of the Siamese Embassy.
- Where would you like to see your field go in the next few years? Is there an area of research in your field that you feel needs more focus/attention?
I’ve been excited to see a lot of work towards decolonising art history that has been happening for a little while. There are some really great strides happening, and I would love to see how it evolves to the university teaching context as well. Diversifying the curriculum is not the same as decolonising it, and I think it is vital to understand how the social and cultural conditions of modernity have influenced ‘art history’ as a field. We also often teach with such microspecialisations, and are encouraged to stay in that area through our careers, but opening things up and removing the territoriality can be very rewarding.
Read Volume 9 (2022)
Ritual: Practice, Performance, Reception
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Featured Image: The Trier Adventus Ivory, photo by Ann Münchow