Oliver Smithies Lecture: Disaster, Sensation and the Zeppelin Sublime

H. Scott Orr, The destruction of airship SL-11 near London, September 1916

Professor Donna West Brett (Oliver Smithies Visiting Lecturer) will deliver an Oliver Smithies Lecture entitled ‘Disaster, Sensation and the Zeppelin Sublime’

Zeppelins played a significant role in shaping the British home front experience during the First World War, which Trudi Tate characterised as ‘a fantasmatic, infantile, and pleasurable relationship to the war and its objects.’ In September and October 1916, three German airships were shot down over Essex, events that drew tens of thousands of spectators, including journalists, who collected souvenirs or photographed the wreckage. Despite widespread disillusionment with the war, the presence of zeppelins elicited a paradoxical mix of intoxication, exhilaration, and horror (Freedman, 2004), a response reflected in the broader public imagination. Photographs and illustrations of burning airships and bombed houses, reproduced in the illustrated press, formed part of the burgeoning visual culture surrounding these spectacular events. This lecture examines the public emotional response, the extensive visual culture, including media narratives, and the mass consumption of wreckage souvenirs and postcards that emerged from these spectacles, thereby constituting what became known as the ‘Zeppelin Sublime.’

There will be a drinks reception following the lecture, in the Buttery from 18:15

All are welcome. Please RSVP to college.​office@​balliol.​ox.​ac.​uk if you would like to attend.