Cloistered subfields predictably produce cloistered scholarship. Cloistered scholarship is, as a rule, quite dull. Why, then, does cloistering exercise such a fatal attraction for so many academics? A new article in the Journal of Transport Geography confronts this dilemma in an unusually honest way. “Port Geography at the Crossroads”—co-authored by nine academics based variously in […]
Tag Archives | port towns
The Coastal History Blog 23: “Sailors on Bicycles”
The first time I considered sailors in port as an academic subject was back in 1993, when—as a graduate student in search of a dissertation topic—I read the first chapter of Marcus Rediker’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Reactions to Devil varied, to be sure, but few have offered a coherent alternative […]
CFP: Self, Other & Elsewhere: Images & Imagination in the Port Cities of Atlantic & Mediterranean Europe
Call for Papers for the following conference, Self, Other & Elsewhere: Images & Imagination in the Port Cities of Atlantic & Mediterranean Europe, held in Bordeaux 11th – 12th May. In these times when urban marketing is being applied to outline the identity of our cities with a view to promoting it more effectively, this […]
The Coastal History Blog 22: “The Trained Researcher’s Eye… and What It Misses”
Many historians, young and old, nurse the lingering hope that their next round of research will uncover that career-making revelation, their personal equivalent of Carlo Ginzburg’s benandanti or Robert Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre. But if it turned up right in front of you, would you notice it? Don’t be so sure. Consider the sad case […]
The Coastal History Blog 21: “The ‘Cosmopolitan Port Town’—Is There Any Other Kind?”
Michael Pearson, in his book The Indian Ocean, emphasizes that littoral societies have markedly different attitudes from their more parochial neighbors inland. He quotes Ross Dunn on the “cosmopolitan frame of mind” of Muslims in East Africa, southern India, and Malaysia and adds: “This was reinforced by the coastal location and the fact that most […]
Sailors on Shore Leave During the First World War: reinforcing stereotypes of Jack Tar?
There remains a stereotypical image of Jack Tar as a man with loose morals who enjoyed himself ashore whenever he got the opportunity. Yet, how far this stereotype stands up has increasingly been questioned by historians.[1] This article does not intend to join in this debate per se but rather to reflect on the stereotype […]
