Cultural narratives of the 1990s
This post is the second in a series of six blogs which will document and critically engage with a workshop series hosted by Dr. David Geiringer (QMUL) and Dr. Helen McCarthy (Cambridge) under the title ‘Rethinking Britain in the 1990s: Towards a new research agenda’. Running between January and March 2021, the series brings together contemporary historians from a range of career stages to map existing work and stimulate new thinking on a decade which, from the perspective of our present times, looks very unfamiliar indeed. by Jessica White (University of Manchester) Ask someone to recall a cultural history of Britain in the nineties, and, depending on who you are talking to, they would probably reference Harry Potter, Live & Kicking, Oasis or Tracey Emin. Or, they might choose to talk about Goosebumps, SMTV, Blur or Damien Hirst. To an even greater degree than on previous panels, the personal infused the third, ‘cultural narratives’, session of the Rethinking Britain in the Nineties series, so much so that it came to resemble, in Kennetta Hammond Perry’s words, ‘a witness seminar’. And yet in his provocation paper, Sam Wetherell searched for a theme that could neatly tie together the various strands and […]