‘The line dividing the cosmopolitan culture and the moral geography of slavery was not, however, as wide as the images of the salon and the slave port invoked here might suggest…it was precisely the proximity of these two spheres of social existence…that necessitated their conceptual separation. For if the goal of the project of taste was to quarantine the modern European subject from contaminating forces associated with the political economy of slavery and commerce in general, the desire for cultural purity was continuously haunted by what it excluded or repressed.’
Simon Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (2011)
Welcome to the Student Salon!
The Student Salon Project was created by Lauren Working and Susannah Lyon-Whaley in collaboration with student partners in summer 2025. It brings to life the culture of the salon as a means of engaging with historical and literary materials from the University of York’s curriculum and beyond. It unlocks the influence of the literary salon on early modern writing through historical objects and decolonial perspectives. Its portable cabinet of authentic 17th and 18th-century objects means that global connections can be touched, seen, and smelled. From Chinese porcelain to silver to textile fragments, the items in the Student Salon offer new insights into early modern social and intellectual culture. The portable ‘cabinet’ can be borrowed for seminars, workshops, and other teaching activities.