All posts by jwbaker

James Baker is Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. James is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and holds degrees from the University of Southampton and latterly the University of Kent, where in 2010 he completed his doctoral research on the late-Georgian artist-engraver Isaac Cruikshank. James works at the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and digital technologies. He is currently working on a history of knowledge organisation in twentieth century Britain. In 2021, I begin a major new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project 'Beyond Notability: Re-evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage, 1870 – 1950'. Previous externally funded research projects have focused on legacy descriptions of art objects ('Legacies of Catalogue Descriptions and Curatorial Voice: Opportunities for Digital Scholarship', Arts and Humanities Research Council), the preservation of intangible cultural heritage ('Coptic Culture Conservation Collective', British Council, and 'Heritage Repertoires for inclusive and sustainable development', British Academy), the born digital archival record ('Digital Forensics in the Historical Humanities', European Commission), and decolonial futures for museum collections ('Making African Connections: Decolonial Futures for Colonial Collections', Arts and Humanities Research Council). Prior to joining Southampton, James held positions of Senior Lecturer in Digital History and Archives at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab, Digital Curator at the British Library, and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, a convenor of the Institute of Historical Research Digital History seminar, a member of The Programming Historian Editorial Board and a Director of ProgHist Ltd (Company Number 12192946), and an International Advisory Board Member of British Art Studies.
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Dave Brown on Flirting with Apocalypse

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According to my colleague John Wills, the United States has spent much of the last 100 years ‘Inviting Doomsday’. In the much the same way as ‘detached’ networks such as Al Jazeera offered some of the most enlightening reflections on the August riots, British cartoonists provide valuable perspectives on this American folly.

Dave Brown is perhaps most known for his anti-American cartoons. These two below, on response of President Bush to Hurricane Katrina (and which form part of the Flirting with Apocalypse group on the British Cartoon Archive website), are perhaps his finest work.

(c) Dave Brown, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, Dave Brown, The Independent, 3 September 2005.

In Après le Deluge…Moi Brown uses Millias’ Ophelia (1851-2) [Tate Britain N01506], a painting after Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to satirise Bush’s unawareness of danger. Bush, like Ophelia, drowns, yet unlike his Shakespearean counterpart the former is surrounded by floating detritus. This, like the cuts to Federal Flood defence and Army Engineer Corp budgets and his reluctance to bind the United States to the Kyoto climate change protocol, Bush both cannot see and does not want to see.

(c) Dave Brown, British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent, Dave Brown, The Independent, 10 September 2005.

In Newton’s Third Law of Distraction Brown this times takes his cues from William Blake, whose Newton (1795) rejected the single-mindedness of the Enlightenment philosopher. Bush is equally stubborn and inflexible with his calculations (and those, Brown accuses, of the United States administration he controls) concluding that the blame for Katrina stops ‘…NOWHERE…NEAR…ME…’. Linking Bush with a scientist such as Newton allows Brown to also deliver an environmental message – that Bush’s self-serving pseudo-science whilst the leader of the worlds most polluting nation has made him culpable for extreme weather events such as Katrina.