The late-Victorian and Edwardian period marked the zenith of urban park construction, spurred on in part by concerns about the physical and moral health of those living in the city. For the middle-class reformers at the time, public parks offered a space through which the unique and complex social issues of the era could be addressed and resolved. The public park was unique in that it made children visible on an unprecedented scale. Their role was fixed at the very heart of discourses on health; of the body, the mind, the nation, and the empire. This research explores these discussions of identity, and how that was negotiated by children in the very specific landscape of the public park. Previous work on the concept of childhood during this period has focused on an adult interpretation of the figure of the child, steeped in nostalgia and imbued with an adult fear and hope for the future. I argue that this ignores the lived experience of the child, and denies them agency in creating their own identity. This thesis uses a methodology inspired by current research in the emerging interdisciplinary field of childhood studies and drawing on the insights of material cultures studies to address this. The park space offers a unique opportunity to study lived experiences of childhood, designed as it was for use by the general public, with children firmly in mind. This work addresses the gaps in our knowledge and understanding of public urban parks in relation to children and explores the idea of a late-Victorian and Edwardian childhood identity as a complex and nuanced phenomenon. Throughout my thesis I use three parks as my primary case studies. These are Saltwell Park in Gateshead, Whitworth Park in Manchester, and Greenhead Park in Huddersfield. All three parks are situated in towns in the north of England that experienced dramatic change as a result of the industrial revolution and so reflect the anxieties present nationwide as a result of this change. By way of contrast I also consider parks in London and elsewhere to understand the uniqueness of these parks but also how they were situated within broader national debates over children and childhood. My investigation is broken down into three major thematic areas, each of which seeking to explore and analyse a particular aspect of childhood identity. The first of the three themes is the ‘Natural Child’. I explore the notion that children were thought of having a greater connection with, or affinity for, the natural world, and that they benefitted in particular from access to nature. The second area of research is the ‘Playful Child’. Here the idea that children were inherently playful, frivolous and could be shaped through correct play will be discussed. Finally, I investigate the ‘Empire Child’, exploring the notion of the child as the future of the Empire and the Nation, and the embodiment of concerns over racial superiority, military conquest and economic power. Within each of these sections I examine the way that this idea is expressed in the prescriptive and other literature, before addressing the way in which these notions could be articulated in the park landscape. The material culture of the park and the way in which the parks encouraged or discouraged children’s behaviour is analysed in relation to each of these themes. Significantly I also show how children engaged with, or rejected, notions of childhood identity, acknowledging that children were not just passively receiving instruction, but were actively involved in negotiating their own identity.

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Yes / Dig! Arts Access Project brought together excavation with artistic interpretations using collage, painting, drawing and poetry, to engage school learners in the legacy of the Whitworth Park Community Archaeology and History project. Through a series of workshops and site visits with local schools, participants expressed some of the ambiguities felt by urban children about parks. However, by the end of the sessions, they had increased their understanding of the history and heritage of their everyday places and were more confident about visiting parks. / Martin Harris Centre and University of Manchester Alumni Funding - Arts Access Funding

The illustrative work of Edward Linley Sambourne for Punch magazine during the period 1901-1910 addresses a myriad of political topics prevalent during the Edwardian period in British history. This thesis examines two of those topics - Women's Suffrage and Socialism - through their artistic treatment by one of Britain's most influential periodicals. Through a study of the historical context and iconography of selected cartoons-of-the-week, one is better equipped to understand and appreciate the meaning, message, and humor in the cartoons. Chapter 1 introduces the Sambourne, Punch magazine, and the Edwardian period in general. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss four Women's Suffrage cartoons and four Socialism cartoons respectively. Chapter 4 draws conclusions regarding Sambourne's techniques as a cartoonist as well as the relationship between the text and image in his illustrations.

This thesis offers an assessment of the Edwardian Reformation and its significance for the wider development of English Protestantism by examining the liturgical reforms of the period. The central question that this thesis grapples with is, how did Edwardian reformers apply their theological concept of the 'church' as an invisible spiritual body of believers to the task of reforming the visible temporal institution of Tudor England? The overarching argument of this study is that, in the eyes of the reformers, the formal liturgy of the Church of England, as defined by the Prayer Book, formed a nexus between the temporal and spiritual realms so that the invisible Church was given visible expression in public worship. This meant that Tudor men and women could actively participate in the spiritual communion of saints through the tangible experience of church services, especially through the sacraments and by observing the Sabbath. The examination of the relationship of mid-Tudor evangelical ecclesiology and liturgical reform presented in this thesis allows us to understand the Edwardian Church on its own terms. It challenges some long-held assumptions about the figures and events of the period, and their combined effect on later developments in English Protestantism, which continue to colour historiography. By taking a fresh approach to seemingly well-known texts, such as the Book of Common Prayer, this thesis argues that the relationship of ecclesiology and liturgical reform was a central feature of the Edwardian Reformation, an aspect of the period that has not been widely acknowledged in recent scholarship. A different ecclesiological theme is investigated through the lens of liturgical reform in each chapter to show how significant the doctrine of the church was to mid-Tudor reformers' goals in terms of ecclesiastical structure and practical ministry.

In this thesis I argue that understanding Forster’s effeminate male characters is central to understanding the novels that they appear in. Tibby in Howards End and Cecil in A Room with a View are often viewed as inconsequential figures that provide comic relief and inspire pity. But if, instead of keeping them at the margins, readers put Tibby and Cecil in direct contact and conflict with the dominant themes of gender identity, gendered power structures, and gender equality in these novels, these characters develop a deeper significance that details the fin de siècle’s ever-changing attitudes regarding prescribed gender roles for both men and women. Indeed, by examining Forster’s feminized male characters, one can chart the development of these roles in both the larger world and Forster’s prescription for gender evolution in his novels.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-229).

Scholars researching Britain from the 1880s to the First World War have often failed to portray a diverse range of British attitudes towards the period’s state-sanctioned efforts to assimilate the Romani people. In most academic works, British voices that called for the elimination of Romani culture drown out those that were opposed to their assimilation into sedentary industrial wage-labour and formal education. They also mostly engage in only a surface analysis of the relationships between perspectives on the Romani and the great shifts occurring in British society. This thesis reveals a greater complexity of viewpoints within British society over issues of Romani assimilation that were increasingly fueled by the age’s rapid social and technological change. Poets, journalists, evangelical reformers, romantic gypsiologists and progressive politicians were some of the groups in Britain whose projections of fears and desires upon the Romani created an unintended referendum on the quickening forces of modernity. / Graduate

This project explores the technological hybridity of early color formats against medium-specific definitions of photography and cinema. It argues for the centrality of female photographers as early practitioners and innovators of color photography in the United States and England. It claims that color featured prominently in the late Victorian and Edwardian imperial imaginary to construct orientalizing views of colonial subjects. Early color photographic technologies (1890-1920) are situated within contemporaneous scientific and social debates around color. These debates evince a crucial epistemological shift in the conceptualization of color: from a relational phenomenon of the human senses and world to an empirical and physical one affixed to objects. The first chapter advances the color image as an event: a co-production of the human sensorium and machine technologies, rendered in time and space. The second chapter charts the intersections of photography, color, and gender discourses, with an emphasis on three female photographers who successfully marshalled the gendered biases of color in order to establish expressive modes and photographic careers in the new color medium. The gendering of color also helped to define orientalist photography and film of the British colonial era, particularly that of India, the subject of the third chapter. Comparing color in orientalist depictions of India and the use of color in Indian photographic portraits compels us to reconsider the links between technology and subjectivity as well as modernity and colonialism. This dissertation seeks not only to rewrite the history of early color photography but also to reconfigure understandings of aesthetic modernity as a complex imbrication of art, technology, gender, and imperialism.

The focus of this study is on the contemporary phenomenon of the adaptation the motifs of the European turn-of-the-century fashion – Edwardian fashion (1901-1910) – to daily or a near-daily sartorial practice, defined by the author as neo-Edwardian style. On the premises of ethnographic study, this thesis explores how people transform and embody their identities through garments by living images and motifs of ‘past’ to negotiate the meanings of their clothing, appearances and personalities in the present. There is a scarcity in academic studies on the subject of styles inspired by historical fashion and in particular the neo-Edwardian style as a form of identity formation and representation. By applying a multi-methodological approach, including both historiographic and ethnographic research, the thesis strives to define the role of the neo-Edwardian style as an embodied sartorial practice and motives for its adaptation in the 21st century. The findings show that the neo-Edwardian style serves as an alternative style choice, reflecting an individual taste and should be understood as a visible marker of identity narrative and connected to the sense of ‘true self’ expressed in the personal style.