Jonathan Stafford – författare

Imperial steam explores the early history of steamship travel to Britain’s imperial East. Drawing upon the wealth of voyage narratives which were produced in the first decades of the new route to India, the book examines the thoughts, emotions and experiences of those whose lives were caught up with the imperial project. The potent symbolism of the steamship, which exceeded the often harsh realities of travel, provided a convincing narrative for coming to terms with Britain’s global empire – not just for passengers, but for those at home who consumed the ubiquitous accounts of steamship travel. Imperial steam thus contributes to our understanding of the role of imperial networks in the production of the British imperial world view.

New framework for the aesthetic representation of the sea.We are no strangers today to visual representations of human suffering at sea: the refugee crisis that continues to play out in the seascape between Europe and Africa (and not only there) yields an ever-growing archive of humanitarian tragedy. As both a visual backdrop and a lethal medium of unequal mobility, maritime space and landscape play a significant role in mediating the ethical demands of this crisis. Yet, there has been little exploration of the longer history of morality’s role in our understanding of aesthetic representations of the sea. The diverse contributions in Moral Seascapes explore the various symbolic forms through which these shifting moral norms and values have been manifested, contributing to debates concerning the place of the sea in visual and literary cultures and the history of morality and emotion, as well as the emergence of modern subjectivity.Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives such as visual culture, experimental art history, literary studies, history and philosophy, Moral Seascapes develops distinctive new insights into the relationship between the moral cultures of modernity and the image of the sea.