Department of English – Dr.Stephen Brown
2 Minutes and 07 seconds
[Banner statingDr. Brown’sname and department is splashed across the bottom]
STEPHEN BROWN: I'm Stephen Brown and I teach in the English department and I'm also thedirector of theater emphasis.
I have been researching the history of the book,particularlypublication history from about 1660 through to 1830, which is the period inEnglish known as the long eighteenth century.I'm interested in how those artifacts are made and the function of technologyin driving knowledge and then how they are distributed, how markets are open up.Currently I've been looking at other forms of print media including I gothere for example
[Dr. Brown holds up a comic book that is believed to be one of the first examples printed; Dated to 19th Century Glasgow, Scotland]
>STEPHEN BROWN: somthing I have just started working on, generally called thefirst example of a comic book to be published anywhere in the world, it wasprinted in Glasgow in the early 19th century and the illustrations were alldone black.
[Dr. Brown puts down the comic book example and holds up an example of an engraving to the camera, the engraving pictures two men murdering an old woman (the Mrs. Docherty of the trial). One is seated on a heap of straw, grips her between his legs, while he covers her mouth and nose; she struggles violently, her spectacles fall off. The other man, wearing a soldier's jacket and peaked cap, holds her down, straddling across her, and raising a warning forefinger. Behind him on the right the plank door opens, behind it a priest wearing a Jesuit's biretta waits stealthily, holding up a cross.]
A man named William this is an example of one of his engraving workswhich is called the burking poor old Mrs. Constitution.So what I'm looking at this point is how as facility to produce images in an inexpensive way to reach out to a wider audience lay the foundations for modernnotions of graphicnarration so as it unfolds, the idea of what print is and how it communicates ideas, changes radically for me from one project to another.
You constantly want tomake people aware that they don't live in the static environment, that there wasa past, that past was successful and not successful,you know it had dreams which is fulfilled or it didn't fulfill. Ourpresent is going to be no different from that and I think that's the crucialthing about research, not just what it does to change us but that it has to becommunicated constantly to the general publicwhat's being done and why it's being done.
I'm Stephen brown and Trent Research Matters
[Trent Logo appears on screen and outro music plays]