Narrative and photography: Lucien Whitworth visits The National Archives of Ireland

The Pembroke College Tutorials Plus grant provides access to funds that enrich students’ learning and support activities such as subject talks, academic visits and more. Lucien Whitworth (2019, English Language and Literature) has recently been awarded a grant to visit The National Archives of Ireland in Dublin. Lucien explained his dissertation research for us:

“What I love about the course at Oxford is its scope; there has, and continues to be, opportunities to study pretty much whatever you like within the English canon. This is not only limited to fiction; a case in point is my dissertation which is a highly interdisciplinary project that doesn't necessarily fit within the parameters of 'fiction'. That the course offers the chance to incorporate philosophy, history, visual art, and sociology amongst many other things, is perhaps its greatest strength. My tutor has been hugely supportive in the research process for my dissertation offering up helpful advice regarding how best to approach archive visits as well as providing insightful recommendations as to how an extended piece like a dissertation can all come together.

My dissertation will investigate the intersection between narrative forms and photography in the context of late nineteenth/early twentieth-century imperialism. It will explore the polemical Congo Atrocity Lecture series that used Alice Seeley-Harris’s images, alongside letters and other texts which responded to the violation of native Congolese under Leopold II’s rule. I want to explore how these varied texts are inherently literary – a literariness that informs our understanding of Seeley-Harris’s photographs and the extent to which narrative and photography were mutually influencing. Positioned less as technologies of representation than of power, this material perhaps reaffirms encoded racialised dynamics.  

The archives I visited in Ireland contained diaries and letters of Roger Casement - a central figure to the period, place and issues with which I need to be engaging and a key player in disseminating Alice Seeley Harris’s atrocity photographs from the Congo as a way of catalysing reform. The material in Dublin relates to Casement’s time as consul in the Congo, as well as some time spent in the United Kingdom and France. The diaries include observations on the people and conditions that he encountered in his investigations into the mistreatment of indigenous peoples in the Congo. It was fantastic material to see as a way of contextualising the works of John and Alice in the broader global response to the Congo atrocities.”