Bank Street Arts

Karen Harvey is a cultural historian of eighteenth-century Britain. Her research uses written and visual, printed and manuscript sources, along with buildings and material culture, to examine gender, identity and power. Her most recent book is called ­The Little Republic: Masculinity and Domestic Authority in Eighteenth-Century Britain (in press with Oxford University Press, forthcoming spring 2012). This examines how men engaged with the activities, space and concept of the ‘house’.

There are two main strands to Karen’s Residency.

“First, I want to explore my completed research in the context of a Georgian domestic space and with other practitioners (non-historians). This will involve some research on the Bank Street buildings and associated history. Yet having written an academic monograph, I want to develop my own practice and try new ways to communicate the results of my historical research. My sources – manuscripts, prints, houses – are material objects. During the Residency I will approach these sources in ways that chime with this materiality. The details of this aspect will be honed prior to and during the Residency. During the Residency, I will work with other artists as I think about space and writing. This close relationship with those working in the Bank Street buildings may generate new insights on past practices in similar spaces.

Second, the Residency will be used to reflect on the idea of ‘an Academic in Residence’. This is a novel idea. Based on the model of the Artist in Residence, it should be somewhat distinct from the more conventional models of academic consultancy or knowledge transfer. An Academic in Residence, particularly one at an Arts Centre, should not only share their expertise but should reflect on their own academic practice in the light of the practitioners around them. I do not know how a Residency at Bank Street Arts will affect my own practice as an historian. I am certain that it will, though, and reflecting upon this change is one of my aims.”