Posts in Research
Art Academies and Art Academy Schemes in Britain and Ireland, 1600-1770
Art Academies and Art Academy Schemes in Britain and Ireland, 1600-1770

Before (and after) the establishment of the Royal Academy in London in 1768, there were numerous individuals and associations that proposed or implemented plans to create academies for the arts in Britain and Ireland. Examples can be traced to at least the early seventeenth century. To date, there is no publication that pulls together a single list of academies and/or academy schemes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. In the chart below, I bring together the manuscript and secondary literature to offer a timeline of schemes, proposals, recommendations, and attempts to establish academies for the arts in Britain and Ireland between 1600 and 1770.

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Art, Architecture, Research, Blog PostsJason Kellyroyal academy, academies, history of art, eighteenth century, seventeenth century, british studies, irish studies, scottish studies, enlightenment, education, history of education
Exhibition: (New) Blueprints for Counter Education
Exhibition: (New) Blueprints for Counter Education

I am happy to announce the exhibition (New) Blueprints for Counter Education, which I have curated as part of my work for the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute. Featuring new work by Artur Silva, Lasana Kazembe, Jason M. Kelly, and Kara Taylor, the exhibition uses virtual reality, poster art, film, and music to consider our current moment—and the ways that the visual arts, philosophy, poetry, performance, and history equip us to both understand and respond to the challenges that we face.

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Art, Exhibition, Research, TeachingJason Kellyexhibition, design, poster, music, poetry, vr, virtual reality, film, education, pedagogy, critical theoryComment
Archive as Pedagogy: Oral History and a Journal of the Plague Year
Archive as Pedagogy: Oral History and a Journal of the Plague Year

In March 2020, the COVID-19 Oral History Project, based at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), teamed up with A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19 (JOTPY), based at Arizona State University to create and curate a series of oral histories focused on the lived experience of the pandemic. Among the results of this collaboration has been a focus on research-based pedagogy and learning for undergraduate students, graduate students, and the public at large. This pedagogical emphasis has both shaped the archive and has been shaped by the process of developing the archive.

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Research, TeachingJason KellyCOVID-19, oral history, research and topics, pedagogy, teaching, interview, digital history, digital humanities, pandemicComment
The Worcester Election of 1747
The Worcester Election of 1747

I am currently working on an article about the 1747 election in Worcester, which I’m titling "Corruption, Disenfranchisement, and Political Culture: The Worcester Election of 1747.” Linda Colley once recognized this election as the pinnacle of Tory influence and corruption in the provinces. My article offers Worcester as a case study of political culture at mid-century. In it, I link national politics to local affairs by analyzing the practices of enfranchisement and disenfranchisement as well as the cultural objects generated in response to the election, including poems, prints, porcelain, and architecture.

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ResearchJason Kellyelection, corruption, voting, franchise, rights, political culture, C18, eighteenth centuryComment
Open Access Oral History Training Module Now Available
Open Access Oral History Training Module Now Available

The COVID-19 Oral History Project has teamed up with the Journal of the Plague Year (JOTPY) project to make these oral histories about the experience of COVID-19 available to the public. Among the items created through this collaboration is our Oral History Training Module. The first version of this module is available in Canvas through Indiana University.

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Research, TeachingJason Kellyoral history, online teaching, public historyComment
Open Access Article on the Covid-19 Oral History Project in the Oral History Review
Open Access Article on the Covid-19 Oral History Project in the Oral History Review

This essay, “The COVID-19 Oral History Project: Some Preliminary Notes from the Field” reflects on C19OH as a rapid response oral history project – how the research team conceived and implemented it, both in the field and in the classroom, and how they continue to transform it in response to practical concerns and ethical frameworks.

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ResearchJason Kellyoral history, COVID-19, article, history, pandemicComment
Press Coverage of The COVID-19 Oral History Project in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, etc.
Press Coverage of The COVID-19 Oral History Project in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, etc.

The COVID-19 Oral History Project is one of several research projects in which historians and museum curators are collecting stories about the lived experience of COVID-19. This important work is being contextualized by journalists, who see the importance of this archiving work for future generations.

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Announcements, ResearchJason Kellyoral history, public humanities, public history, digital humanities, digital public historyComment
Infant Mortality in Indiana
Infant Mortality in Indiana

Indiana ranks 43rdfor its infant mortality rate (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). Over the past 5 years in Indiana, an average of 596 babies have died annually, approximately one baby every 14 hours (Indiana State Department of Health, 2017). Twenty-nine of Indiana’s 988 (2.9%) zip codes account for 27% of Indiana’s infant deaths. Major contributors to the persistence of poor birth outcomes in Indiana’s high risk zip codes are racial/ethnic, geographic and socioeconomic disparities in birth outcomes. Clinical interventions alone cannot reduce these disparities because birth outcomes, like overall health, are the product of one’s environment, opportunities and experiences. 

Equipping grassroots leaders to be health and social change agents is the first critical step in creating and sustaining a community culture that promotes individual, family and neighborhood health. We train and mentor grassroots maternal and child health leaders (GMCHL) in Indiana zip codes at high risk for infant mortality to help build the capacity of these neighborhoods to foster improved pregnancy and infant development outcomes. 

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Research, Exhibition, Public ScholarshipJason Kellyinfant mortality, public healthComment
Google Trends Data Shows Increasing Public Interest in the "Anthropocene"
Google Trends Data Shows Increasing Public Interest in the "Anthropocene"

There are numerous indicators that suggest increasing public interest in the Anthropocene—a concept that suggests humanity has transformed the earth to such an extent that we have entered a new biogeophysical age. In this interactive graph, I have pulled data from Google Trends, which shows quantitative evidence of growing interest in the Anthropocene.

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Digital Humanities, ResearchJason KellyAnthropocene, infographicComment
John Ruskin on the Tomb of Agostino Sanctucio at the Basilica of Santa Croce
John Ruskin on the Tomb of Agostino Sanctucio at the Basilica of Santa Croce

These are a couple photos from the Basilica of S. Croce in Florence that I took while I was there in December. In addition to my Blue Guide, I brought along John Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence, which he published in 1875. Here is his description of the tomb of Agostino Sanctucio, which sits quite neatly with his chapter on the nature of the Gothic from Stones of Venice.

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Research, ArtJason KellyJohn Ruskin, Gothic, Renaissance, Florence, art historyComment
Aesthetic Categories in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Looking at Neoclassicism, the Renaissance, and the Gothic through Word Frequencies
Aesthetic Categories in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Looking at Neoclassicism, the Renaissance, and the Gothic through Word Frequencies

One of my ongoing projects has been a historiography of the concepts of neoclassicism, the gothic, and the renaissance over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As part of this work, I ran some Google n-grams to chart the emergence of these categories. I don’t think that there is anything surprising in the data, but it’s nevertheless interesting to see it visualized. The first graph looks at the terms “Neoclassical,” “Renaissance,” “Gothic,” and “Arts and Crafts.” The second graph examines four different terms for speaking about the medieval world: “Medieval,” “Middle Ages,” “Gothic,” and “Dark Ages.”

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Blog Posts, Digital Humanities, ResearchJason Kellyneoclassicism, gothic, arts and crafts, aesthetics, renaissanceComment
A Multimodal Approach to the Anthropocene
A Multimodal Approach to the Anthropocene

Using An Anthropocene Primer as our case study, this essay is organized into three sections. The first section introduces the primer as a tool that bridges disciplinary boundaries to advance critical and timely sociocultural research examining changing earth systems and the human experience. The second section examines the ways that anthropologists might productively engage with the dominant interdisciplinary debates and metanarratives about the Anthropocene and the role that tools such as the primer might play in this. The final section reflects on how the primer is one model of multimodal pedagogy that answers the needs of formal, informal, traditional, and continuing education in relation to serious play. In part, then, An Anthropocene Primer is one form of anthropological educational practice that might be used to prepare the next generation of researchers and partners with frameworks to pursue ethnography in the Anthropocene that is truly applied, interdisciplinary, and multimodal at the outset.

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Research, Teaching, Public ScholarshipJason KellyAnthropocene, anthropology, open access, peer review, pedagogyComment
Kennington Common, the Occupy Movement & the Freedom of Assembly (From the Archive)
Kennington Common, the Occupy Movement & the Freedom of Assembly (From the Archive)

This essay offers a brief history of the commons and protest through the story of Kennington Common, relating it to contemporary debates over the Occupy Movement and the rights of assembly and protest.

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Blog Posts, Public Scholarship, ResearchJason KellyHistory Workshop, history, nineteenth century, protest, commons, occupy movement, occupy, privatization, assembly, kennington commonComment