Visual Representations of the Unemployed

German Historical Institute London and the University of Exeter

Friday 12th December - Saturday 13th December 2008, Poldhu Room, Kay
Labs, University of Exeter

The unemployed are one of the most stereotyped social groups in modern
society, depicted as dangerous criminals, lazy loafers, prey for
political demagogues, completely apathetic, happy scroungers or
demoralized and desperate individuals. These stereotypes have been
peddled in visual as well as literary sources, and yet the former has
attracted little scholarly attention. This conference will examine
Western representations of the unemployed in the fine arts, film,
photography and cartoons and explore the iconology of unemployment and
whether it is separate and distinct from the iconology of poverty; the
signifiers and symbols used to represent the unemployed and how these
have changed over the course of the twentieth century; the cultural
differences in representations; and the relationship between images of
the unemployed and their status in society.

Friday, 12th December

2.00 - 2.30 Registration and Welcome

2.30 - 4.00 Session 1: Foundations

* Jens Jäger (Cologne University): To See is to Believe? Images and
Social History.

* Andreas Gestrich (GHI London): Visual Representations of Poverty and
Idleness in the Early Modern Period.

4.00 - 4.45 Session 2: The Arts

* Ute Wrocklage (University of Hamburg): Representations of the
Unemployed in German Art before the First World War.

4.45 - 5.15 Coffee Break

5.15 - 7.00 Session 3: Film

* Matt Perry (University of Newcastle): Visualising Unemployment through
the Aesthetics of Capitalist Modernity: Case Studies in Films from the
1930s.

* Steve Cannon (University of Sunderland): 'Social Realism' and
Unemployment in Contemporary European Cinema.

7.30 Conference Dinner

Saturday, 13th December

9.00 - 10.30 Session 4: Photography

* Jeannette Gabriel (College of Mount Saint Vincent, New York): Pink
Slips on Parade: Building the Unemployed Movement through Images of
Everyday Protest, 1935-1939.

* Antoine Capet (University of Rouen, France): Photographs of the
British Unemployed in the Inter-War Years: Representation or Manipulation?

10.30 - 11.00 Coffee Break

11.00 - 12.30 Session 5: Cartoons

* Matthias Reiss (University of Exeter): Dragon Slayers and Dole Queues:
Unemployment and the Unemployed in German Political Cartoons, 1974 to 1998.

* Nicholas Hiley (University of Kent at Canterbury): "If we only had a
job, we could take a holiday": Unemployment in British Political
Cartoons of the last Hundred Years.

12.30 - 1.00 Final Comment and Discussion

* Christopher Burgess (People's History Museum, Manchester)

1.00 Buffet Lunch and Departure

Further information can be obtained at the following web address:

http://www.huss.ex.ac.uk/history/conferences/index.php

Please direct enquiries to Dr Matthias Reiss, Department of History,
University of Exeter (M.Reiss@ex.ac.uk).