Tag Archives | coastal history

Cresmina Dune in Cascais, Portugal, 2019. Photographs by the author unless otherwise indicated.

The Coastal History Blog 49: Coastal dunes as historical subjects

Sand has been a recurring theme here at the Coastal History Blog, from some of my earliest posts, “What are Beaches for?”,  “The Political Economy of Sand,” and a bit more indirectly, “Coasts of the Anthropocene,” followed by a post inspired by my nearest coast, the Indiana Dunes State Park facing Lake Michigan. More recently, […]

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George_Morland_-_The_Wreckers_-_1993.41_-_Museum_of_Fine_Arts

Fully Funded PhD Opportunity! Shipwreck Shores: Wrecking and Coastal Cultures in Britain and Sweden, 1700-1850

We at Port Towns and Urban Cultures are excited to announce a fully funded “Coastal History” PhD opportunity. This split-site PhD will provide the successful candidate with the unique opportunity to research and teach in both Britain and Sweden, thanks to a new collaboration established between the University of Portsmouth and Halmstad University. The PhD […]

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Desire is projected across ‘empty’ space in Calvino’s Invisible Cities. 

Seascape with Distant Coast, by J. M. W. Turner, c. 1830-1845. © Tate. Image reproduced by permission of Tate and under CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported).

Port Cities and Desire in the Work of Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino’s (1923-1985) Invisible Cities is a work of fiction that continuously reimagines the city of Venice. It demonstrates that the same urban landscape may offer numerous different promises to its various spectators: of new lives and new possibilities, but also of new sensualities, transgressions, and experiments. This article will draw on a number of […]

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Boat Building at Bridport Harbour, c.19th Century.
By Permission of Bridport Town Council

The Naval History Blog: No. 8

Why maritime history matters: Maritime highways – A personal journey. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book aptly titled The Prize, Daniel Yergin quotes Admiral ‘Jacky’ Fisher as telling Winston Churchill, on the latter’s appointment to First Lord of the Admiralty in September 1911, ‘east of Suez oil is cheaper than coal.’[1] It later became clear […]

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