Nora A. Draper is Roland H.
O’Neal Assistant Professor of Communication and a Research and
Communications Consultant for the Prevention Innovations Research Center at
UNH. She was a 2017-2018 Faculty Fellow
in the Center for the Humanities.
Professor Draper will discuss her
research as a Fellow in a talk titled Land’s Princesses: The Women Who
Developed Polaroid.
The story of the Polaroid camera
– among the most iconic media technologies of the twentieth century – is often
told as the biography of one man: Edwin Land. A celebrated scientist and
inventor, Polaroid’s longtime president is credited with pioneering a model of
entrepreneurship in which technological innovation fundamentally changes
artistry and culture. Land’s commitment to pairing technological progress with
user-centric design has been cited by contemporary tech icons, including Steve
Jobs, as a model. However, the narrative of a singular genius inventor elides
the labor of those who fall outside this archetype.
In a growing tradition of
recovering stories that have been absent from histories of technology, this
project combines archival research with contemporaneous interviews to
understand women’s role in the research, development, branding, and marketing
behind one of the United States’ most iconic consumer products. In particular,
it focuses on a group of women whose liberal arts education was harnessed by
Land to infuse an artistic sensibility into the company’s consumer
technologies. Situated within media theory, science and technology studies, and
feminist technology studies, this project explores how these women – known
collectively in Polaroid folklore as “the Princesses” – personified the
company’s intersecting interests in art and technology.
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The Center for the
Humanities annually hosts a series of informal lectures featuring the
recipients of the previous year’s faculty fellowships. The talks focus on the
fellows’ research. They provide an opportunity for faculty members to learn
more about each other’s work and allow the Center to show off some of the
intellectual riches it has helped foster. The goal of the series is to create a
collegial environment that encourages discussion.