Contested Geographies, Captive Audiences: Frontiers and Their Public Meaning(s)

Stuart Dunn, KCLStrand Symposium on Public Engagement

26th June 2015

stuart.dunn@kcl.ac.uk @StuartDunnCerCh

Frontiers

- Objects, ideas, identities, histories…

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J. Richardson RE, Cyprus: A Guide, 1881

Frontiers: Public objects

Frontiers: Public objects

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• The spatial configuration of history (Azaryahu and Foote 2008)

‘THE SPATIAL TURN’

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Birdoswald/Gilsland

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Image Source: http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=24739&start=0&sid=c1e2eadc854c7d5f9401ea8e936ac6e8

“Per Lineam Valli…”Bede (AD.

731)

“It as called by ancient writers VALLUM BARBARICUM, PRAETENTURA and Clusura by Dion. … MURUS, PICTS-WALL…”

Camden (1586)

“[The German limes] had not, like the Britannic Wall, the object of checking the invasion of the enemy … the Romans in Upper Germany did not confront their neighbours as the confronted the Highlanders of Britain, in whose presence the province was always in a state of siege

Mommsen (1885)

“The Roman Wall … is a great fortification intended to act not only as a fence against a northern enemy, but to be used as the basis of military operations against a foe on either side of it”

John Collingwood Bruce (1886)

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“English Heritage and the National Trust delimit and control access to the Wall. These authoritative interpretations and recommended route ways delimit the bodily encounter with the Wall and this affects the physical intelligibility of the experience of the landscape”

Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly (2009)

Frontiers

- Objects, ideas, identities, histories…