Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) is looking for one post-doc to work under the supervision of prof. Philippe Marion and prof. Sébastien Fevry on the EOS-funded project “The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830-1940)” (B-Magic).
B-Magic is a four-year EOS-funded project which started in March 2018 and is led by prof. Kurt Vanhoutte (University of Antwerp). This project has set out to write the as yet unwritten history of the magic lantern as a mass medium in Belgium. The project’s results are an essential contribution to the study of the country’s cultural history as well as to international media historiography. B-Magic aims to rediscover the various functions of the lantern performance within the Belgian public sphere, in particular, its use in the transmission and negotiation of knowledge, norms and values by different societal groups. Scientists and entertainers, teachers and priests, political movements and organizations: they all used projected visual narratives to inform, entertain, educate and mobilize audiences of sometimes more than a thousand people per occasion. The lantern was the first visual mass medium to contest the printed word as a primary mode of information and instruction. All layers of society, both literate and illiterate, received visual information about nature, religion, science, new technologies and foreign countries through this fascinating “projection medium”. The B-Magic consortium researches the pivotal role of the magic lantern in Belgian society from the country’s independence (1830) up to 1940, when its use declined. To this end, it brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Performance Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, Urban History, History of Science and Knowledge, Communication Studies, Semiotics, and Narratology. B-Magic will produce the first comprehensive study of the role of the magic lantern as a mass medium in a country.
As part of this project, a two-year 75% part-time post-doc position (to start in January 2021), is offered at UCL. This new mandate is a continuation of a first post-doc assignment awarded from 2018 to 2020 and is in relation with the following subprojects: Continuer la lecture de Post-doc Vacancy as Part of the EOS-funded project “The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830-1940)”




