Lantern Slides - a new eBook

Happy to announce the publication of this book! #NellekeTeughels @CultHIst_Kul #histed
available in open access https://t.co/ZfpUVkRKyG pic.twitter.com/NPXE4l9t1x

— Kaat Wils (@KaatWils) February 20, 2023

This can be downloaded from the site here.

The book mentions the research of Emily Hayes, who kindly contributed some ideas for my GA Presidents blog on the historical use of lantern slides by the RGS and the GA. The GA was founded to help share lantern slides.

She talks about the use of slides by Halford Mackinder, who remains a significant (if problematic) figure in the history of geographical thought:

One of the three case studies Hayes analyses to demonstrate the gradual engagement of the RGS with the lantern is the famous lecture ‘On the Scope and Methods of Geography’ given by a young Mackinder to the RGS in 1887. The geographer had been a key figure in the acceptance and employment of the lantern projector to promote geographical knowledge. In his presentation, in which images and text were synchronized, Mackinder demonstrated he was ready to fully embrace the technology. The debate on the use of lantern slides in geographical education saw Mackinder as one of the main supporters, who recognized the pedagogical potential of the technology to instruct children.

There is an interesting section which I hadn't read about before on how Halford Mackinder was asked by COVICS to produce some slides and lecture notes which became a series of illustrated books - the pictures being smaller versions of the slides used in the original lectures for the Colonial Office. This would doubtless be of interest to those concerned with de/colonising geography.

I need to spend a little more time reading this.

Source:

Mackinder, Halford J., ‘The Teaching of Geography from an Imperial Point of View, and the Use Which Could and Should be Made of Visual Instruction’, The Geographical Teacher, 6.30 (1911), 79–86.

Mackinder, Halford J., India. Eight Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office(London: George Philip & Son, 1910).

Maddrell, Avril M. C., ‘Empire, Emigration and School Geography: Changing Discourses of Imperial Citizenship, 1880–1925’, Journal of Historical Geography 22.4 (1996), 381.