Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain

This thesis is an epistemological experiment in knowing the past atmospherically. It seeks to address the question of how we might go about recovering, from the historical record, something as hazy, fleeting and potentially intangible as an atmosphere. The thesis tells a story of smoking at four key...

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Main Author: Marković, Ivan
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/59834/
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author Marković, Ivan
author_facet Marković, Ivan
author_sort Marković, Ivan
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This thesis is an epistemological experiment in knowing the past atmospherically. It seeks to address the question of how we might go about recovering, from the historical record, something as hazy, fleeting and potentially intangible as an atmosphere. The thesis tells a story of smoking at four key moments in twentieth century British history: the turn of the 20th century, the Second World War, the 1980s, and lastly, the mid-2000s. The story is narrated through the lens of atmosphere to tease out and foreground the feelings, emotions, senses, rhythms and affects that otherwise remain a backdrop in conventional historical accounts. The thesis adapts Sumartojo and Pink’s (2018) tripartite approach of knowing about, through and in atmosphere to archival research, and draws on a wide range of material, from newspaper articles, magazines, etiquette guides and diaries to letters, film, photography and material culture. It re-visits sources already considered by historians of smoking, while also introducing as yet unexamined material. The thesis then proposes four specific modes of attunement, materiality, time, conviviality and space, through which the four moments of the smoking past are examined, and past atmospheres conjured. Finally, the thesis makes the case for storytelling as a form of narration that has the unique capacity to compel an atmospheric attunement between the reader and the text, an experiential closeness and intimacy not always required or evoked by academic work, but one that has the potential to regain and hold a past atmosphere in the present.
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spelling nottingham-598342025-02-28T14:46:52Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/59834/ Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain Marković, Ivan This thesis is an epistemological experiment in knowing the past atmospherically. It seeks to address the question of how we might go about recovering, from the historical record, something as hazy, fleeting and potentially intangible as an atmosphere. The thesis tells a story of smoking at four key moments in twentieth century British history: the turn of the 20th century, the Second World War, the 1980s, and lastly, the mid-2000s. The story is narrated through the lens of atmosphere to tease out and foreground the feelings, emotions, senses, rhythms and affects that otherwise remain a backdrop in conventional historical accounts. The thesis adapts Sumartojo and Pink’s (2018) tripartite approach of knowing about, through and in atmosphere to archival research, and draws on a wide range of material, from newspaper articles, magazines, etiquette guides and diaries to letters, film, photography and material culture. It re-visits sources already considered by historians of smoking, while also introducing as yet unexamined material. The thesis then proposes four specific modes of attunement, materiality, time, conviviality and space, through which the four moments of the smoking past are examined, and past atmospheres conjured. Finally, the thesis makes the case for storytelling as a form of narration that has the unique capacity to compel an atmospheric attunement between the reader and the text, an experiential closeness and intimacy not always required or evoked by academic work, but one that has the potential to regain and hold a past atmosphere in the present. 2020-07-24 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/59834/1/Hazy%20histoires%2C%20smoking%20atmospheres%20in%20twentieth%20century%20Britain.pdf Marković, Ivan (2020) Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. smoking history atmosphere affect storytelling archive
spellingShingle smoking
history
atmosphere
affect
storytelling
archive
Marković, Ivan
Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain
title Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain
title_full Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain
title_fullStr Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain
title_full_unstemmed Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain
title_short Hazy histories: Smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century Britain
title_sort hazy histories: smoking atmospheres in twentieth-century britain
topic smoking
history
atmosphere
affect
storytelling
archive
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/59834/