You cite 11 different archives; how did you determine which collections to visit, and did this list develop over the course of the research process? Are there other relevant collections that have come to your attention since Spectacular Realities?

I went to the logical archives that were public. As I have explained, I had to break down the door of the Musee Grevin to get in. I added places as I began to see what more I wanted to learn but the project is less "archival" than it is "special collections" except for the Musee Grevin and the Police on the Morgue. There was a gold mine there. With all those archives, do you REALLY think I missed something? But seriously, you never know with ephemera. I also think I could possibly find out more at the Archives de Paris, which I used..but if I were more interested in the social history of entertainment, maybe I could have found more. I mention Robida a few times but since people have worked on him more.


How are you “reading” periodicals for historical information/potential quotations? And did you find quotes by consulting actual newspapers or the secondary literature on the topic? How has this type of historical research changed now that many periodicals are digitized and fully searchable by OCR?
The periodicals: ALL DONE BEFORE COMPUTERS. Painful research done by hand as it were to determine the 10 or 15 most important newspapers and picking key dates (1882 wax museum opening; 1876 woman cut into pieces story). I read on microfilm mostly and NO WORD SEARCH. THIS WOULD BE A GAME CHANGER NOW. The worst was reading the papers in a room where when darkness came at 4:00pm in winter the microfilm machine had an orange light on it from the lights above. 

I also want to know how you went about developing an argument as you progressed further into your research. Did you go into this project with a set of leading questions? At what point did the content/structure of chapters become clear?

It also ways evolved. I know I had the wax museum and the morgue and the public taste for reality. The dissertation has a second chapter on the wax museum. I also explained that the cinema angle emerged while I was doing research and because Meusy and Charney sort of pushed me there. 

Your chapter on the Musée Grévin is more of an institutional history, but I am curious to know more about the project of documenting the wax tableaus via photography (presumably for sale or publicity purposes??).
I disagree that it is merely an institutional history. I explain how it worked as a display and as a form of visual address. This is very important and was not commonly done at the time by anyone. If you read Harroway on the Musee of Natural History she mostly talks about the content and not the Viewing Positions. There was an edited book by Linda Williams that included an essay of mine and even put the theater scene from the wax museum on the cover.