Hello, /u/Arenariaa, /u/thelittlestkobold, and /u/DanielleTheArchivist! Thank you so much for these papers and discussion!

A somewhat methodological question for all of you: given the premise of this panel's theme, of erasure from the historical record, can you speak a little about the process of excavating these lives when, presumably, the sources on these individuals is quite sparse?

It's quite fascinating that there are three rather different time periods here that could be united under a similar topic. It's already come up that f.ex. parentage and civil war played in a role in how the people in question were forgotten but more generally, how would you charaterize the historical and especially historigraphical patterns at work in the subjects of your study being "lost"?

This is a complete tangent to the main theme of the paper, but /u/littlestkobold - my mental image of 'exploration' is completely tied up in early modern examples. What was exploration like in this period of Roman history? Was 'explorer' a recognised thing for someone to be? How did news and information about discoveries get recorded, spread and used?

Thank you to all the contributors, this has been a very good video. Do you feel a particular connection to the people you study? Is it personal, or more of a 'business' perspective?

How difficult can it trying to study these topics, when its essentially often a side line in a source? Or something that happens 'off screen" while all the focus is on the bigger powers. Do you have any suggestions on how to sort through all the 'noise' to focus on those particular aspects?

Very good panel, thank you to everyone!

For any of the panelists, what do you think are the best methods to continue spread and sharing these stories? What is the best way to teach history that includes such overlooked characters so that it becomes just as normal as the usual flood of WWII/Rome/etc questions and discussion the sub gets?

Big thanks to all the panelists.

I'd be interested in hearing more about how historians are able to piece together all this history from the bits and pieces of other sources. Everyone of the figures mentioned are the kinds of people often left out of the main accounts, it must be very difficult to get any kind of a record or look at their lives. The musical Hamilton spends a fair bit of time talking about "Who will tell your story?" and it seems like those who are trying to tell it for many of these figures have a pretty big challenge ahead of them.

Thank you to the panelist, I really enjoyed the video. I asked an earlier question but refreshed and saw I was essentially copying others! So hopefully you'd like a somewhat different one. (Turns out both questions I defaulted to were taken!)

For something a bit lighter, what drew you to these particular figures?

Many thanks to all of the panelists - these are all fascinating insights!

I have one particular question for /u/Arenariaa - I was intrigued by the apparently-sudden turn in fortunes of Katherine Read. Have you found any evidence that points to a specific event/period as the source of this turnaround?

For any of the panelist, is there anything you'd like to add on that you didn't get time to discuss in the video?

Welcome to the “Names You've Never Heard: [Deleted] Figures from the Annals of History” conference panel Q&A! This panel reintroduces us to figures from the past whom history appears to have erased or forgotten.

Moderated by Nicolas Huet (/u/FrenchMurazor), it explores the lives of Katherine Read, an eighteenth-century Scottish portrait painter; Juba II of Mauretania, Roman client-king and foster child of the emperor Augustus; and two early twentieth-century bookbinders and book artists named Suzanne Roussy whose lives have somehow been condensed into a single confusing narrative.

It features:

Jessica Harborne (u/Arenariaa), presenting her paper “How Silences Are Written into History, and How, or Whether They Should be Written Out of It: The Case of Katherine Read”.

For art historians, the name ‘Joshua Reynolds’ immediately calls to mind one of the major European painters of the 18th century. Not so long ago, however, some of the paintings attributed to him were discovered to instead be by his contemporary, Katherine Read. Clearly a highly talented artist of the time, we must ask, why then has her name descended into obscurity? Read, a Scottish exile, spinster, and one of few early modern female pastellists, died alone in 1778 on a return journey from India. It was at this point that her colorful life of travel, fame and courtly extravagance was transformed into a tale of loss. During her later years, she had already begun to be side-lined from the portraiture scene; with one London courant critic declaring, ‘Stand aside, Miss Read’. After her death, this erasure from the world of art, and that more generally, became essentially absolute. She was only mentioned twice in writing until an article about her appeared in 1905. Her once frequent and lengthy correspondence is now also presumed lost or destroyed. The story of these letters, which form the remaining traces of her voice, reveal the gendered element to her silencing. As a woman, Read, unlike her male relatives, was unable to be employed in formal service to the state. Her correspondence, therefore, was retained by her family and not handed over to the national archives. Dying unmarried and without children, it consequently passed to more distant relatives, whose interest in preserving her memory came to dictate its preservation or deletion. For reconstructing her legacy, this writing must thus be returned to in a way that appreciates silence, rather than pasting over it, as it forms an important part of her legacy, which is made up of loss as much as it is life.

Andrew Kenrick (/u/littlestkobold), presenting his paper, “Rome's African King: Juba II of Mauretania (52 BC-AD 23)”.

The Berber prince Juba II was one of a handful of foreign children raised in the Roman emperor Augustus’s household in the early 1st Century BC, before being instated as king of Mauretania to rule on Rome’s behalf in 25 BC. His legacy was not of tyranny but of scholarship. Juba became a famed antiquarian, travel writer and explorer; he discovered the Canary Islands and searched for the source of the Nile, wrote histories of Arabia and Libya, and led diplomatic missions on behalf of Rome to its neighbours. He ruled alongside his wife Cleopatra Selene (40 BC-6 BC), the daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, also raised in Augustus’ household after the death of her parents.

The 1st Century BC is the best-known era of Roman history, in part because the work of its own historians has survived, which makes it all the more surprising that two such prominent members of Imperial Rome’s elite have not received the attention they deserve. In part, perhaps, this is because their ethnicity does not fit with modern perceptions of Rome, which continues to be seen as essentially white, and in part because the kingdoms that bordered the Roman empire are often dismissed as provincial backwaters.

In this paper I will use evidence from Juba II’s own art collection to show that he was not the ruler of some far-flung barbarian outpost, but head of a thriving colony of Roman culture in North Africa.

Danielle van Wagner (/u/DanielleTheArchivist) presenting her paper, “A Tale of Two Suzannes: Rediscovering a Twentieth-Century Bookbinder”.

As an archivist at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, I often have occasion to search through some of our lesser-known collections. Recently this included the fonds of Canadian bookbinder, Douglas Duncan, who worked in Paris in the 1920s. Tucked away with his papers was a small envelope labelled “Mlle Roussy’s endpapers.” Inside were thirty-six hand-painted art samples intended for the inside covers of specialty, high-end printed books, each embossed with “Atelier d’Art Suzanne Roussy 38 Quai Henri IV PARIS.” This was an exciting find as the decorative arts, especially within the field of bookmaking, is an arena where the work of women often goes unaccredited.

Published academic sources identify the artist as the Franco-Caribbean writer and philosopher, Suzanne Roussy Césaire (1915-1963), who supported herself as a bookbinder in Paris prior to her marriage in 1937. The Museum of the City of Paris, the only institutional holding for a book designed by Roussy, confirms this identification. Yet, an in-depth analysis of Parisian newspapers and art journals shows that a Suzanne Roussy steadily exhibited book bindings, end paper designs, wallpapers and decorative cushions beginning in 1919 up until 1935, even though Suzzane Roussy Césaire was born in 1915 and lived in Martinique until 1934. Two accomplished women - vastly different in occupation, class and race – who happened to share the same name, have been merged by scholars and museum professionals, and as a result one of these women has been completely erased from history. This presentation will provide, for the first time, the biography of Suzanne Victoria Roussy (1895-1958), identify her work, and place her within the largely male-driven world of high-end book production occurring in Paris in the 1920s and 30s.

Ask us anything!