this is for an in-personal panel for the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) conference (in-person only), which is taking place in Seattle, WA November 12-15, 2025. 

This panel proposes exploring the myriad forms of exhibiting images that emerged over the course of a long nineteenth century in a transnational context. These might include, but are not limited to, phenomena such as magic lantern shows, dioramas, panoramas, cosmoramas, stereography, stereopticons, and early cinema. We are equally interested in examining these spectacles as sites for the production and consumption of images and as widely used rhetorical figures referring to mental and social processes in literature. Beyond the commonplace notion that such phenomena constituted “imported magic” from the metropolises of the industrialized North Atlantic, how might we rethink the emergence of new spectacles in relation to existing visual cultures and as adopted or modified by local actors? How might rethinking spectacle help make visible different patterns of exchange in a century that witnessed a proliferation of technologies for capturing, projecting, and reproducing images?

https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/20058