A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slides in the History of Learning

Slides for the magic or optical lantern were a major tool for knowledge transfer in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Schools, universities, the church and many public and private institutions all over the world relied on the lantern for illustrated lectures and demonstrations. This volume brings together scholarly research on the educational uses of the optical lantern in different disciplines by international specialists, representing the state of the art of magic lantern research today. In addition, it contains a lab section with contributions by archivists and curators and performers reflecting on ways to preserve, present and re-use this immensely rich cultural heritage today.

Authors of this collection of essays will include Richard Crangle, Sarah Dellmann, Ine van Dooren, Claire Dupré La Tour, Jenny Durrant, Francisco Javier Frutos Esteban, Anna Katharina Graskamp, Emily Hayes, Erkki Huhtamo, Martyn Jolly, Joe Kember, Frank Kessler, Machiko Kusahara, Sabine Lenk, Vanessa Otero, Carmen López San Segundo, Ariadna Lorenzo Sunyer, Daniel Pitarch, Jordi Pons, Montse Puigdeval, Angélique Quillay, Angel Quintana Morraja, Nadezhda Stanulevich, Jennifer Tucker, Kurt Vanhoutte, Márcia Vilarigues, Joseph Wachelder, Artemis Willis, Lee Wing Ki, Irene Suk Mei Wong, and Nele Wynants.

Sarah Dellmann is a media historian with an expertise in visual media of the 19th and early 20th centuries, mostly in Europe. She especially works on the magic lantern and early cinema, integrating archival, ethical, epistemological and intermedial perspectives as well as digital methods. After her PhD defense in 2015, Dellmann worked as researcher and coordinator in the research project A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slide Heritage as Artefacts in the Common European History of Learning (2015–2018) and was chief organiser of the projects international conference. She is editor at Early Popular Visual Culture and author of Images of Dutchness: Popular Visual Culture, Early Cinema, and the Emergence of a National Clich, 1800–1914. Frank Kessler holds the chair of Media History at Utrecht University and is a former president of Domitor, the international association of research on early cinema.