Economy and Epistemology of Gossip in 19th- and early 20th-Century US-American Literature and Culture
Final Report Abstract
With an emphasis on realist fiction, life writing, and periodicals, the present project sought to answer the questions of what and how gossip knows, and what this knowledge is worth. To this end, it analyzed public and private uses of gossip in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the US witnessed the rise of urban living, mass media and celebrity culture, and women’s increased participation in the public sphere, which all in their different ways shaped commonly held notions of privacy, publicity, gender ideals, and social capital. As “a discourse that negates and conflates the dialectics of inside and outside in its movement between the private and the public realms”, gossip supports the mutual constitution of mass media and intimate sources. A a “discourse of the margins and of the marginalized”, it is singularly suited to the recovery of illicit information. As an “informational black market”, gossip stresses the economic relevance of epistemological concerns. Gossip is always personal, an “intimate, usually collective narrative” that relies on close personal ties between all involved, and thus offers key insights into the make-up of various networks of interaction. Gossip is thus analyzed in this project as a vital source of private, implicit, or otherwise ‘unofficial’ knowledge and an influential structure for knowledge dissemination. Among the key outcomes of this research project are a nuanced understanding of gossip’s role in the reputation management of one of the US’ first international celebrities, queer actress Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876) and the establishment of gossip as a central aspect of the diversification of periodicals between 1860 and 1890 through its evocation of public intimacy in the exchange between authors/editors and readers. These results were regularly presented in talks and are also central to the project’s key publications. Another central result of the project is the design and curation of a digital collection of annotated and transcribed primary material via ArchivalGossip.com. The project thus illustrates the importance of considering gossip in writing the history of sexuality and the history of knowledge, shows that the central tenets of modern celebrity culture date back to at least 1850, stresses the importance of conceptualizing gossip as an intimate mode of knowledge (in fiction and non-fiction writing), and offers a case study for the implementation of DH tools and methods for cultural and gender studies.
Publications
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Dangerous Domesticity: Gossip and Gothic Homes in Edith Wharton's Fiction. Edith Wharton Review, 35(1), 22-46.
Horn, Katrin
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Of Gaps and Gossip: Intimacy in the Archive. Anglia, 138(3), 428-448.
Horn, Katrin
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The Public Gossip of Town Topics: The Journal of Society (1885-1937). European journal of American studies, 15(4).
Horn, Katrin
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“Every One Knew”. Edith Wharton Review, 36(2), 148-164.
Horn, Katrin
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“Right or Obligation? Privacy in Henry James’ The Bostonians.” The United States and the Question of Rights. Eds. Irina Brittner, Sabine N. Meyer, and Peter Schneck. Heidelberg: Winter, 2020. 137-156.
Horn, Katrin
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Cushmania: Reconstructing Queerness and Celebrity of a Nineteenth-Century Actress.” Digital Humanities and Gender History. Eds. Gisela Mettele, Martin Prell, and Pia Marzell. 2021
Foltinek, Selina & Katrin Horn
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ArchivalGossip.com: A Scholarly Take on Nineteenth-Century Tattle Tales. Visualizing Objects, Places, and Spaces: A Digital Project Handbook.
Foltinek, Selina & Horn, Katrin
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Methods and Manuscripts: On Pursuing American Studies in the Archive.” Forum: „Method as Practice,“ ed. Ilka Brasch and Alexander Starre . Amerikastudien/American Studies. 67.1 (2022), 5 – 34
Horn, Katrin
