Time Tribes: How the Railways Made Communities (1840-1900)

the railway station colorized

**Please note this seminar has been cancelled due to the speaker being unwell.**

 

When it comes to modern loyalties, scholars of various disciplines have predominantly looked at class, profession, region or nation. While these no doubt represent important sources of identity, in the long nineteenth century TIME emerged as a significant source of individual and collective self-definition. Increasingly, how people related to and made use of their own time marked out their actual and desired status. Time, that most elusive of matters, became instrumental for the making and unmaking of communities that sometimes transcended regional and national contexts. Much of this can be attributed to the railways and the temporal innovations they facilitated, above all standard time and railway timetables. This paper approaches the phenomenon in question – time tribes – through an investigation of British and German railway passengers.

Drinks will be served after each seminar. All welcome, no booking is required.

 

Diseases of Modern Life

Contact name: Alyson Slade
Contact email: alyson.slade@ell.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Open to all