The Six (?) Lives of Alexine Tinne

THE SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF DISCOVERIES

 VIRTUAL LECTURE SERIES

The Six (?) Lives of Alexine Tinne

This is a presentation on a manuscript-in-process on the life (and afterlife) of Alexandrine “Alexine” Tinne (1835-1869), a Dutch woman who traveled and explored the Nile River and its tributaries (among other places) in the 1850s and 1860s.  This work looks at the many roles ascribed to her because of her class and gender.  The title refers to the different “lives” she inhabited depending on who was talking/reporting about her and her time in Africa.  

In her life, she was portrayed as a wealthy “lady traveler”, a brave adventurer, a “cracked” madwoman, and an explorer.  In death, Tinne became a martyr and cautionary tale.  In her afterlife, depending on century and target audience, she was an abolitionist, a New Woman, an imperial mother, an explorer, a feminist, a fool who [SPOILER ALERT!] got herself killed…   My goal with this lecture/workshop is to talk through some of my writing/organization of the book and to glean insights and perspectives on this work from SHD members.

Mylynka Kilgore Cardona is an Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University-Commerce where she teaches courses on women and travel, exploration and discovery, cartography, and transatlantic history. Dr Cardona specializes in the intersection of gender and travel, especially in the nineteenth century.  A transatlantic historian with a background in historical cartography, Dr Cardona is a bibliographer for Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography and the Vice President /President Elect of the Texas Map Society. Her most recent article "From Reparations to Respectability: The Tinne Family of Liverpool” can be found in Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Dec. 2022): 161-181. Her book chapter “Ideal and Idealised Explorer Typologies,” is part of the forthcoming Bloomsbury series  A Cultural History of Exploration.