Uncommon Knowledge 9: Emily Knight on Death Masks

Sarah Griffin talks to us about the fourteenth-century cosmologist Opicinus de Canistris, who attempted to reconcile medieval theology, cosmology, and cartography in a series of incredible diagrams.

D.Phil student in English, Kristen Grogan, joins the podcast to talk about the relationships between modernist writers, including T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald

Emily Knight, DPhil in Art History, tells us about the morbidly fascinating world of Victorian death masks, and what they can tell us about society, science, celebrity, and attitudes towards death.

Dr Helen Slaney joins us to discuss Emma Hamilton's 'Attitudes' - the series of classical poses she developed in response to the ancient vases collected by her husband, William Hamilton, in Naples. Listen and find out how to do an eighteenth-century impression of Medea!

Dr. Courtney Traub, Teaching and Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford, joined us this week to tell us about an off-beat, counter-cultural publication from the 1960s and 70s, the Whole Earth Catalog.