During the Fellowship at the College, García Morcillo is working on a project that aims to study the strategies, encoded language of advertising in magazines edited between the 1890s and the 1920s in the cities of Buenos Aires and New York. Particular attention will be paid to uses of pre-modern and ancient themes and imageries in adverts that featured as instrumental co-producers in the construction of reputation, reliability and legitimacy of modern goods and brands. The rich, cultural ecosystem of magazines produced during this period in these two vibrant American metropoles on the Atlantic coast reflected rapid changes in the physiognomy of cities, including the impact of economic transformations and ideas connected to technological progress. The project, and the collaboration with Prof. Dr Florian Freitag seeks to demonstrate that magazines and urban ecosystems mutually impact each other. The project aims to contribute to other research initiatives from the UA Ruhr and to the AURORA-Hub “Cultures: Identities and Diversities”. It will further serve as a pilot initiative for the creation of the interdisciplinary research collaborative project “Multimodal Landscapes of Mediterranean Antiquity”. The first step of this network will be a workshop devoted to the study of reimagined ancient pasts in the cityscapes of Ruhr metropoles that will take place at the College.
Asst. Prof. Marta García Morcillo
Durham University (UK) | Ancient History
Marta García Morcillo is an Ancient Historian, currently Research Fellow at Durham University and UK Principal Investigator of the AHRC-DFG collaborative project “Twisted Transfers: Discursive Constructions of Corruption in Ancient Greece and Rome” (2020-24). Previously, she worked as Senior Lecturer and Lecturer at the Universities of Roehampton (London), Wales TSD, Leicester and Dresden; and was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Universities of Heidelberg and Potsdam. Her research revolves around the study of ancient economies, with a particular interest in Roman financial activities, economic mentality and motivation, and the relationship between markets and ideas of value. She also works on the reception of antiquity in modern visual cultures, with a special interest in cinema, advertising and printed media. Marta is cofounder of the international networks "Imagines: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts" and "Engendering Ancient Economies".
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Prof. Florian Freitag
University of Duisburg-Essen | American Studies
Prof. Florian Freitag
University of Duisburg-Essen | American Studies
Florian Freitag is Professor of American Studies at the Department of Anglophone Studies of the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests include Transnational American Studies, Canadian Studies, Popular Culture, Theme Park Studies, Periodical Studies, and Performance Studies.
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