Behind the WSP
About the Creator
Sybil F. Joslyn is a PhD Candidate at Boston University studying American art and material culture in the long nineteenth century. Grounded in object analysis and interdisciplinarity, her research explores the junction between material and visual culture, the social and economic life of objects, and intercultural exchange in the Atlantic World.
Sybil's dissertation, "Worth Its Salt: Salvage in the Maritime Visual and Material Culture of America's Long Nineteenth Century," examines maritime salvage as object, material, and process to interrogate conceptions of identity, property, and value during the Age of Sail. Through the study of five object assemblages centered around shipwreck paintings, scrimshaw, decorative arts and architecture made from salvaged materials, and ship figureheads, her work demonstrates how conceptions of maritime salvage acted as a driving force in contemporary artistic production, patronage, and collecting. Sybil's project contributes to the growing body of scholarship in the Blue Humanities by challenging and expanding traditional narratives of interpretation and cultural meaning in the maritime world.
The World Salvage Project grew directly out of this research as a tool for advancing the study of maritime visual and material culture beyond the boundaries of any single dissertation.
Read more about Sybil's education and experience at www.sybil-f-joslyn.com.
How to Contribute
The WSP welcomes contributions from scholars, researchers, curators, and maritime history enthusiasts. If you have information, corrections, or material you believe should be represented in the repository, please reach out at [email protected].
Support the WSP
The WSP is an independent research initiative maintained without institutional funding. If you find it useful and would like to support its continued development, contributions of any size are warmly appreciated.