‘People are just so interesting!’
– Dr Claire Langhamer, Miniatures episode 1
What can we learn from a headstrong donkey determined to deposit its rider into a large ditch, a First World War soldier refusing his corporal’s order to fetch coffee for the company, or a long dead scribe’s doodle of a labyrinth on a clay tablet? In the Miniatures podcast, we answer these and other questions, demonstrating that the big picture in history is best seen through the assemblage of individual and local stories.
We owe the name of our podcast to the late German historian Alf Lüdtke, who encouraged historians of everyday life to assemble collages of ‘miniatures’ – detailed investigations of localised individual situations – as a means of exposing the depth, density, and complexity of historical experience. We take up Lüdtke’s challenge, featuring discussions with archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians about the texture and fascination of individual episodes, people, and objects.
In season 1 of Miniatures, comprising six episodes, our journey takes us from Bolton in Britain to the shores of the Mediterranean (Algeria, France, Greece, Italy, Spain), from the histories of dictatorship and war to those of race and postcolonialism, and into the realms of heritage, memory, sexuality, and the emotions. We will hear from agony aunts and their readers, soldiers at military tribunals, the targets of state surveillance, memory activists, and oral history interviewees. We will listen to stories ranging from the amusing – such as the man who would not sell his ox when he discovered the buyer was not a smoker – to the tragic – as in the case of the inexperienced Algerian soldier who accidentally shot and killed his comrade.
The histories discussed on Miniatures raise issues of significant contemporary relevance, including the expression of emotions through digital technology, bullying and sexuality in schools, the notion of ‘ordinary people’ in the current political climate, and how the heritage work of past regimes structures the experiences of today’s tourists.
In the first two episodes of the podcast, Dr Kate Ferris and Dr Huw Halstead are joined by all of our guests from season 1 to explore what ‘everyday life’ actually is and to unpick some of our guests’ favourite miniatures. Afterwards, stay tuned for discussions on British emotions and happiness with Prof Claire Langhamer (University of Sussex), Italian Fascist archaeology and the fall of Mussolini with Dr Joshua Arthurs (West Virginia University), youth culture and sexuality in Greece with Dr Nikos Papadogiannis (Bangor University), and postcolonial migrants and Algerian soldiers in the First World War with Dr Claire Eldridge (University of Leeds). Please join us on Miniatures to find out why we agree with Dr Claire Langhamer that ‘people are just so interesting’ and that their lives are worth learning more about.