Sensations

Reviews / Votes

"Sherman is one of a handful of people who work at the intersection of history and art history. He brings to his scholarship an exceptional depth of research and methodological sophistication, and now he has done it again. This time, his subject is archaeology in Jazz Age France, a critical moment when the field was making a concerted effort to professionalize itself, a process, as Sherman shows, that was aimed not just at disciplining practitioners but also at creating a self-legitimizing public image through visual devices of varied kinds: photographs, theatricals, and spectacular displays." -- Philip Nord, author of "France's New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era" "As a discipline grounded in fieldwork, archaeology involves both the social and natural sciences. But this position is the product of a long history that only came to fruition in the twentieth century. The originality of Sherman's book lies in its ability to shed new light on this history: he brings a global and critical lens to bear upon excavation practices, their neocolonial context, archaeology's complex relationship with the media, and the decisive role that amateur archaeologists have played in the discipline. In considering two seemingly dissimilar objects-the founding of French mandate-era Tunisian archeology and the most infamous controversy of the 1920s, the Glozel affair-Sherman brilliantly illuminates an emerging field's sometimes farcical vicissitudes in the face of the public's expectations. His deft and assured mastery of profoundly diverse and often comical sources exposes archaeology's deep connections with what Guy Debord called 'the society of the spectacle.'" -- Alain Schnapp, author of "The Discovery of the Past" "In Sensations, Sherman lays out the ways in which media, journalism, and publishing played a central and complex role in the legitimation of colonial archaeology and its claims to scientific expertise. Moving between the ruins of Carthage in Tunis to the hamlet of Glozel in France, the scientific, the sensational, and the scandalous are brought into focus as an archaeological nucleus of the fame of discovery, racialism, and imperial power. A superbly written and erudite book that exposes the historical bond between archaeology and the press, Sensations lays out the links between science, spectacle, and empire that continue to support archaeology's sensationalizing claims today." -- Zainab Bahrani, coeditor of "Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914" "Only a scholar of Sherman's breadth, depth, and experience could produce such an innovative and interdisciplinary study. Sensations shows us how archaeology positioned itself between science and spectacle. Using case studies from France and French-occupied Tunisia, Sherman explores the extent of archaeology's implication in colonial structures and discourse, from the 1880s to the 1920s and beyond. Dependent on media attention, yet ambitious for academic recognition, archaeology captured the public imagination even (or especially) when it struggled to interpret the distant past it had uncovered. This deeply researched and closely argued book traces an important new history of archaeology by connecting it to transnational histories of science, media, sexuality, and visual culture." -- Christina Riggs, author of "Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century"