The year is 1881 and John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) has captured his close friend, the art historian aesthetic critic Vernon Lee (1856–1935) on canvas. Sargent’s bravura brushstroke conveys Lee’s keen intelligence sharp wit, with inquisitive eyes peering through her gleaming spectacles. Reinforcing agency to look, as a woman historian, portrait status an authoritative cultural mediator who, Hi...

The relationship between historians and film has been difficult. The first step for historians was to recognize film as a worthwhile source to study, a process which started in the 1960s. Paul Smith‘s The Historian and Film, published in 1976 (Smith, 1976) was the first publication in the English language on this topic and has been regarded as a milestone (Jackson, 1977: 713). By then, films we...

Paul S. Martin, a monumental figure in paleontology and ecology, died on September 13, 2010, at the age of 82. He wanted others to know, conveyed in a message from his wife, that when the time came, he would ‘‘die’’ and then be ‘‘dead.’’ He would not pass on, go gently, meet his maker, or go over to the other side. Paul combined an intense love for life, adventure, and natural history with inno...