Trailblazing paths: iconic women through time [reading list]

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating trailblazing paths taken by women whose courage and vision transformed societies. This reading list features five biographies that highlight women who resisted systemic barriers, confronted entrenched hierarchies, and fought for the dignity and safety of others. From activists and reformers to scientists and cultural leaders, these stories reveal how women—often overlooked or silenced—have pushed boundaries, protected the vulnerable, and inspired movements for justice. Together, they remind us that progress toward gender equality has always been driven by those who refused to accept the limits imposed on them.

1. A Slumless America: Mary K. Simkhovitch and the Dream of Affordable Housing by Betty Boyd Caroli

In this biography, Mary K. Simkhovitch emerges as a pioneering force in the settlement house movement and a central architect of American public housing reform. Betty Boyd Caroli traces Simkhovitch’s founding of Greenwich House in 1902 and her influential role in shaping early 20th‑century urban policy, including her leadership in New Deal housing initiatives, the creation of the National Housing Conference, and co‑authoring the landmark 1937 National Housing Act. Balancing an unconventional marriage, family life, and a relentless public mission, Simkhovitch became widely admired—once even depicted as a “Wonder Woman of History”—for her ability to confront urban poverty while advocating fiercely for immigrant communities and affordable housing. This biography, rich with historical insight, positions her as an enduringly relevant figure whose work helped define the federal government’s responsibility to support low‑income families.

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2. American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism by Steven K. Green

American Infidelity traces the dramatic late‑19th‑century clash between a dominant evangelical culture and a rising coalition of freethinkers, feminists, and sexual reformers who sought greater personal liberty and challenged religious authority. Historian Steven K. Green follows this struggle through the activists who fought for birth control, divorce reform, and women’s autonomy, as well as the moral crusaders—including Elizabeth Cady Stanton—who worked to suppress them. Revealing how these “infidels” pushed for a more open, rational, and egalitarian society, Green shows how their movements were ultimately stifled but left a powerful legacy that continues to shape today’s debates over reproductive rights, censorship, and the role of religion in public life.

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3. COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black

Winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History

This book recounts the often‑overlooked story of Harriet Tubman’s 1863 Combahee River Raid, a daring Civil War operation in which she led Union spies, scouts, and two Black regiments up South Carolina’s river to destroy major rice plantations and liberate 730 enslaved people. Drawing on newly examined documents—including Tubman’s pension file and plantation records—historian Edda L. Fields‑Black, a descendant of one of the raiders, brings to life the enslaved families and communities who escaped to freedom that night and later helped shape the Gullah Geechee culture. Through this vivid reconstruction, the book reveals one of Tubman’s most extraordinary military achievements and the enduring legacy of those who fought for liberation.

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4. The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America by Kathleen B. Casey

The Things She Carried reveals how purses, bags, and sacks have long been critical tools for women asserting privacy, autonomy, and political power in America. Kathleen Casey shows how these objects—from 19th‑century reticules to the handbags carried by immigrant workers, civil rights activists, and Rosa Parks herself—became symbolic extensions of women’s rights struggles, allowing them to navigate male‑dominated spaces, protect personal dignity, and challenge discriminatory systems. Drawing on sources ranging from vintage purses to photographs, advertisements, and legal archives, Casey uncovers how women of all backgrounds used the bags they carried to assert agency, cross restrictive social boundaries, and shape pivotal moments in the fight for gender and racial equality.

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5. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA, and the Battle against Thalidomide by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh

This biography tells the remarkable story of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA medical officer who, in the early 1960s, prevented the dangerous drug thalidomide from being approved in the United States, sparing countless Americans from catastrophic birth defects. A pioneering scientist who earned advanced degrees in an era with few female researchers, Kelsey resisted intense pressure from Merrell Pharmaceutical and spent nineteen months demanding solid evidence of the drug’s safety. Her unwavering stance not only kept thalidomide off the U.S. market but also spurred sweeping reforms in drug regulation through the 1962 Drug Amendment, which established modern clinical trials, informed consent, and stronger FDA oversight. Drawing on archival records and family papers, the book reveals her lifelong commitment to ethical science, her battles against industry hostility and institutional barriers, and her enduring legacy as a vigilant protector of public health.

Read more.

Explore our extended list of titles on Bookshop (UK | US) and Amazon (UK | US).

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Prague: a playlist from the heart of Europe

Prague is a city steeped in history, where music has long been intertwined with its cultural identity. This playlist captures that spirit, featuring compositions that reflect the grandeur of its imperial courts, the struggles of its people, and the resilience of its artists. From Mozart’s Don Giovanni, composed specifically for Prague, to Smetana’s Má vlast, evoking the flowing Vltava, these works embody the city’s layered character. Jazz and rock music, too, played a key role in its modern history, fueling movements of resistance and unity.

Beyond its stunning architecture and historic squares, Prague’s music tells a deeper story of triumph and tragedy. This collection of ten pieces allows listeners to experience the essence of the city—not just as a visual marvel but as a place where melodies carry the weight of centuries. Whether through medieval chants, romantic symphonies, or revolutionary anthems, Prague’s soundscape is as enchanting as the city itself, ensuring that, as Franz Kafka wrote, “Prague does not let go; this little mother has claws.”

1. “Overture” from Don Giovanni, W. A. Mozart

Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote, “It is not easy to convey…the enthusiasm of the Bohemians for [Mozart’s] music.” Indeed, Mozart achieved some of his greatest successes in Prague, including the premieres of his Symphony no. 38 in D (Prague Symphony), the Clarinet Concerto in A, and the opera La Clemenza di Tito. The pinnacle of Mozart’s career, though, was the world premiere of Don Giovanni at Nostitz’s National Theater in the Old Town. On October 29, 1787, Mozart conducted the opera in front of a cross section of Prague society. Aristocrats sat sipping lemonade in the lower galleries, while the lower classes stood while downing sausages and beers. The singer Joseph Meissner wrote that when Mozart stepped onto the stage, a hush descended, and “one thousand hands lifted up to greet him.” At the end of the opera, the audience burst into “boundless applause,” and Mozart supposedly uttered the now-famous phrase, “My Praguers understand me.”

2. “Vltava” from Má Vlast,Bedřich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana wrote his magnum opus Má vlast (My Country) between 1874 and 1880. The piece comprised six symphonic poems, each celebrating a historical or natural site in Bohemia. The stirring second movement, “The Vltava” (Der Moldau), conveys the river’s journey through Bohemia. The composer explained that his most famous melody mimicked the region’s geography: “The Vltava swirls into the St. John’s Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Elbe River.” Smetana wrote Má vlast while becoming deaf and ill from the effects of syphilis. He remarked that only his fervent patriotism enabled him to complete the work. The man known as the “Father of Czech Music” died in 1884.

3. “Song to the Moon” from Rusalka, Antonín Dvořák

Antonín Dvořák’s popular opera Rusalka premiered in 1901 at the Czech National Theater in Prague. In this era of national rivalry, the city’s Czech and German speakers maintained their own theaters. Rusalka’s librettist Jaroslav Kvapil based Rusalka on fairy tales gathered by Czech ethnographers Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová. While Rusalka has similarities to Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, this opera has decidedly Czech elements, including Bohemian folk melodies and characters like Vodník (water goblin) and the witch Ježí Baba. In this beloved aria, the water sprite Rusalka asks the moon to reveal her love to a human prince.

4. “Ranní mlha” (Morning Fog), Jaroslav Ježek

During the 1920s, Prague became a center of avant-garde culture. Prague’s Liberated Theater was made famous by the comic duo Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich, as well as Jaroslav Ježek, who composed music for the duo and conducted the theater’s orchestra. Ježek combined contemporary genres, including classical, jazz, dada, and incidental film music. He died in 1942, an exile in New York, having escaped the Nazi occupation of Prague. This moody orchestral piece was recorded sometime between 1929 and 1938 at the Liberated Theater.

5. “Motliba pro Marta” (Prayer for Marta), Marta Kubišová

In 1968, the Communist Party secretary Alexander Dubček implemented “Socialism with a Human Face,” restoring the freedoms of expression and movement. In August 1968, Warsaw Pact troops, led by the Soviet Union, crushed the reform movement known as the Prague Spring. Marta Kubišová’s heartfelt balladbecame an anthem during the invasion. The lyrics are by Jan Comenius, the exiled seventeenth-century Protestant theologian: “Let peace still remain with this country! Let hatred, envy, spite, fear, and strife cease!” Kubišová’s music was censored, and in 1977, she became a spokesperson for the Charter 77 movement.

6. “Magické Noci” (Magical Nights), Plastic People of the Universe

Influenced by the Prog Rock movement, this Prague rock band was not overtly political. Yet, artistic director Ivan Jirous and several band members were arrested in 1976 for “hooliganism” and performing illegally. The “Trial of the Plastic People,” inspired dissidents to issue Charter 77, calling for the end of censorship. This song was first recorded at Václav Havel’s country home in the early 1980s. Its lyrics capture the mystical associations many have with Prague:

The time of magic
Night has come…
Delirium
We live in Prague
That’s where the spirit itself will
One day appear
We live in Prague
That is where.

7. “Start Me Up,” The Rolling Stones

In 1990, signs throughout Prague announced: “The tanks are rolling out. The Stones are rolling in.” That August, the Rolling Stones played to an audience of over 100,000 fans in Strahov Stadium, which, only months earlier, had been the site of the largest demonstration against Communist rule. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were so impressed with the enthusiasm of their Czech fans, many of whom had grown up listening to illegal bootleg versions of Stones hits, that they decided to waive their fees and donate all proceedings to a charity for disabled Czechoslovak children. Their choice to open the concert with “Start Me Up” signified to the crowd that a new era had indeed begun.

8. “Paš o Paňori,” Věra Bílá and Kale

The Romani singer from Rokyčany, a town an hour southwest from Prague, became a phenomenon of World Music in the 1990s. Her rich alto voice and charisma led critics to dub her the “Ella Fitzgerald of Romani Music.” Bílá, who performed and recorded with the Roma band Kale, hailed from the Giňa family of Romani musicians. Their songs mixed pop harmonies with traditional Romani instrumentation.

9. “Nad Vltavou,” Lucie Vondráčková

Lucie Vondráčková is a popular stage, television, and film actress and singer. Her aunt Helena was a pop phenomenon who got her start singing with Marta Kubišová in the 1960s. In this wistful song from 2018, Lucie Vondráčková recalls her favorite places in Prague: whispering cathedral arcades, small theaters, and lofty halls. The nostalgic refrain recalls the rhythm of the Vltava River that Smetana captured in his masterpiece: “Over the Vltava River, Prague dances with a swaying gait. No matter where the clouds go, my dreams will remain with her forever.”

10. “Perfect Day,” Lou Reed

 In 1990, Rolling Stone magazine asked President Václav Havel for an interview, and he replied that he would do it only if Lou Reed asked the questions. Havel first heard Reed’s music in 1968, while in New York, and he smuggled the Velvet Underground album White Light/White Heat into Czechoslovakia. Havel frequently cited Perfect Day as his favorite song. In 2009, in a concert marking the twentieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, Reed performed the hit in an unlikely duet with opera star Renée Fleming accompanied by the Czech Philharmonic.

There are also a number of additional songs after these ten in the playlist for your enjoyment!

_{Featured image by William Zhang via Unsplash.}

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Crafting the queer citational turn

It’s a crisp summer morning, and I’ve just made the half hour walk from Sommerville, Massachusetts, to Harvard University. The grounds are majestic, as you’d expect, but everything is fragmented by iron fence railings (gates all locked or staffed by security) and garish white tents that have been installed for graduation festivities. I show my ID and make my way into the Houghton Library reading room where I’ll continue my research on craftwork for a project on queer modernist materialities. As a fan of the show Dickinson, which aired on Apple TV+ for three seasons from 2019-2021, I’ve asked to see the scrapbook set designer Marina Parker made for the archive. I’m fascinated by contemporary adaptations of literary pasts, and Parker’s scrapbook suggests how craft itself might be fundamental to those queer reworkings. 

As I carefully flip through the scrapbook’s pages, I’m struck by the care Parker has taken in assembling a material record of the show, which pays particular attention to Emily Dickinson’s queerness and the cultural and literary pasts of American activism. Wallpaper swatches are pasted in alongside sources of flooring inspiration, such as the checkered black and white floor she discovered while on a meditation retreat held in an old Massachusetts mansion. Correspondence with some of the oldest continually operating artisan design businesses (like lacemakers and carpet weavers) intwine with Parker’s record of her research rabbit holes. These imbricated textual and material records form a kind of citational archive—in recording her sources, Parker shows in very real terms how the work of a single set designer depends on a network of collaborators.

One particularly unique set of citations emerges in the various “shout outs” Parker records in the scrapbook. For example, on one page she writes about the task of curating the artworks in Dickinson’s brother and sister-in-law’s house, The Evergreens. She names the Assistant Set Decorator, acknowledges her specific contributions, and writes, “SHE DID A FANTASTIC JOB!” 

In an email (my gratitude to curator Christine Jacobson for connecting us), I asked Parker to reflect on the place of these notably enthusiastic scrapbook citations. In her reply, she described her difficulty finding a place in the film industry earlier in her career and moving towards collaboration as a core principle: 

The path to creative satisfaction seemed to be to seek as much creative control as possible. The reality though, is—the pace, breadth, & scope of film work, makes it unrealistic and impossible to truly work alone. And inspiration is often nurtured by exchange. In subsequent years I’ve slowly discovered / am discovering a community of people whose inspired ideas & work ethic I admire. Collaborating with talented, generous, delightful people has become one of my favorite parts of working in film; I now consider collaboration a real gift. I very much want to lift up, acknowledge, and appreciate the many hands and hearts behind the work.  

This scrapbook, in addition to Parker’s ethical and artistic commitments to generous citation, align with larger trends in feminist and queer scholarship. In more particular terms, this approach to not just acknowledging—but actively celebrating—a collaborative process takes its cues from the history of craft. While writing Crafting Feminism from Literary Modernism to the Multimedia Present, I also aspired to represent the “many hands and hearts” that contributed both practically and intellectually to what is ultimately a single-author monograph.

Sara Ahmed has described her own citation practices (not citing any white men in Living a Feminist Life, for example) as a way of building new structures for belonging. She suggests that, “Citation is feminist memory,” a way to craft community when departure seems like a necessary path. The theorist becomes a craftsperson as “Citations can be feminist bricks: they are the materials through which, from which, we create our dwellings. My citation policy has affected the kind of house I have built.” Ahmed describes the intellectual work of feminist writing as deeply predicated on her own willingness to be vulnerable and to respond reciprocally in encounters with readers or audiences of various kinds. In that way, she changes the materials of her craft to capture this dynamic of exposure: “Perhaps citations are feminist straw: lighter materials that, when put together, still create a shelter but a shelter that leaves you more vulnerable.” The house of scholarship, therefore, seems made of bricks—and other times, straw strikes Ahmed as the more appropriate material. 

The artisanal properties of citation emerge in Susan Howe’s work on archives as a kind of serendipitous encounter with craft. She describes the processes by which “Often by chance, via out-of-the-way-card catalogues, or through previous web surfing, a particular ‘deep’ text, or a simple object (bobbin, sampler, scrap of lace) reveals itself here at the surface of the visible, by mystic documentary telepathy.” To illustrate the dynamic interplay of this telepathy, Howe engages in rigorous citation across texts and archives, both public-facing and personal. In one section, Howe quotes Stein’s invocation to “Think in stitches,” prompting the reader to understand the queer encounter at play in the archive, mediated by craft: “In looking up from her embroidery she looks at me.” Instead of bricks or straw, textile knots become her source material for crafting a creative-critical text such as Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives. She writes: 

Quotations are skeins or collected knots. “KNOT, (n., not…) The complication of threads made by knitting; a tie, union of cords by interweaving; as, a knot difficult to be untied.” Quotations are lines or passages taken at hazard from piled up cultural treasures. A quotation, cut, or closely teased out as if with a needle, can interrupt the continuous flow of a poem, a tapestry, a picture, an essay; or a piece of writing like this one. “STITCH, n. A single pass of a needle in sewing.” 

Howe’s vision of the quotation-as-knot both interrupts the flow of an essay or poem while also holding it together—like a binding. (Here I must admit to checking the Index of my book for my own reference to Virginia Woolf’s “heaped up things” in The Years, which in a footnote I describe as “a temporal phenomenon and a record of trauma recall[ing] Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History […] in which ‘His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage.’ It reminds me of Howe’s “piled up cultural treasures”…This line of quotations, or knots, extends between disparate texts, connecting them—stitching these references in a row.)

Multimedia scholars such as Storm Greenwood are crafting the queer citational turn quite literally through the project of “Devotional Citation,” a praxis Greenwood started in 2017 at the “intersection of visual art and decolonial feminist scholarship.” “Devotional Citation” is predicated on a praise framework that is reciprocal and resists the “commodification of study.” Many of Greenwood’s Citations are circulated in a gift economy of stitched quotations that are given back to the author, their words transformed into a new textual artwork. As the recipient of a Devotional Citation that quotes Crafting Feminism, I am struck by the ways in which quotes are remade through contact with Greenwood’s craftwork. Not only are the pieces illuminated—as in, illustrated and decorated with gold metallic pigment—they are illuminating; this citational practice reveals new dimensions of writing on craft through the very stitched nature of each word. 

Scholars are increasingly thinking about the shape their work takes, with citation as a collaborative process that can be made visible or even ritualized—such as the authors of “Feminist Citational Praxis and Problems of Practice” who describe the process of co-authoring a dissertation and engaging in citation practices, or rituals, that “provide an opportunity to ‘flip the scrip’ on CisHeteroPatriarchy.” Or on the topic of “Collabowriting,” Suzanne Churchill and Adam McKible argue that, scholarship is “collaborative in nature: the term ‘monograph’ actually belies the exchange of ideas that occurred through print and over time to produces the work. Collaboration animates and personalizes the scholarly exchange.” Or, one final example: I was recently delighted to see that Danielle Taschereau Mamers had taken visual notes of my exchange with a group of graduate students at the University of Toronto (thank you to Claire Battershill for this joyful invitation). In these notes, Mamers cites me as the speaker but also interweaves her own perspective on the conversation and represents the students’ various questions and prompts, too. The topic of craft and scholarship is enlarged by the visual-verbal patchwork. 

Writing a book is a process of encounter between voices and ideas throughout history—and our citational rituals form a thread, stitching the project together as a crafted object. As those conversations become more intentionally oriented towards variously inclusive methods, craft’s tactile, transhistoric metaphors and practices will form an important stitch in the future of scholarship.

_{Featured image by Mel Poole via Unsplash.}

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We are mythmaking creatures

Many of us feel disconnected, from ourselves, from others, from nature. We feel fragmented. But where are we to find a cure to our fragmentation? And how can we satisfy our longing for wholeness? The German and British romantics had a surprising answer: through mythology.

The romantics believed that in modern times we’ve forgotten something essential about ourselves. We’ve forgotten that we are mythmaking creatures, that the weaving of stories and the creation of symbols lies deep in our nature.

Today, we view myths as vestiges of a bygone era; products of a time when humanity lived in a state of childlike ignorance, lacking science and technology and the powers of rational reflection. William Blake (1757–1827) rejected this bias against mythology, as did Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), and John Keats (1795–1821), among others. They claimed that the worldview we now inhabit is a mythology of its own.

Our challenge, the romantics argued, is not to liberate humanity from myths but to create new myths—new symbols and stories—that serve to awaken the human mind to its hidden potential. We are all mythmakers. We all use our powers of imagination to sustain the worldview we inhabit. Our task is to become aware of those powers, and with that awareness rewrite the narratives that have kept us trapped in feelings of separation from ourselves and the world at large.

The modern experience is one of alienation, incompleteness, and aloneness. We’ve fallen prey to the illusion that everything is divided. The new mythologies that the romantics set out to create turn on symbols and stories of a greater unity that connects all things. The romantics held that our path to wholeness lies in reawakening the imagination and experiencing the world poetically. They believed that myths can allow us to see ourselves as members of a larger family—a “world family”—that includes all living beings on Earth.

But how, you might ask, is this even possible? How can mythology serve a liberating function? Are myths not false and deceptive? And shouldn’t we try to escape myths entirely?

All good questions, and ones the romantics heard loudly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Here are four ways the romantics worked to address them:

1. Reinterpretation. Ancient myths are complex, even confusing, and their meaning is always open to interpretation and reworking.

Shelley’s play Prometheus Unbound is not a simple retelling of a classic myth. He reinvests the story with new meaning by positioning Prometheus as a symbol of humanity who struggles against Jupiter, a symbol of inhumanity. The old myth then acquires fresh significance; it becomes applicable to our modern yearning for community and connection with nature.

2. Reconciliation. The human mind abounds in dualities that can intensify feelings of separation; myths allow us to extend our minds beyond these dualities, thereby instilling feelings of unity.

Blake writes about how the mind creates contraries, such as “reason” and “feeling,” “man” and “woman,” “heaven” and “hell.” His literary and visual work afford us the opportunity to see that these oppositions are not absolute; they are two sides of a whole. A new poetic mythology can allow us to intuit this; it can open the “doors of perception” in ways that allow us to see the unity of the spiritual and the sensual.

3. Reflexivity. When we become aware of our mythmaking powers, we can fashion symbols and stories that position ourselves as the authors or artists of our lives.

In Heinrich von Ofterdingen by Hardenberg (known by his pen name Novalis), the protagonist discovers a book that reflects images from his own life. He has the uncanny realization that the book he is reading is a kind of mirror into his soul. The novel thereby displays a process of acquiring self-understanding through symbols, stories, images, and allegories—in short, through all the elements of mythology.

4. Participation. Because the romantics wanted to make us aware of our creative powers, the stories and symbols they fashion serve to invite us into the very process of mythmaking.

Schlegel’s novel Lucinde is a story about a young man who discovers his artistic potential by falling in love. The novel is itself an invitation for readers to turn inward and discover their own ability to make their lives into a work of art. The novel is meant to be a stimulus for self-inquiry for the reader, who is called upon to see herself through the lens of mythology.

What then makes any given mythology “new” is that it isn’t trying to mask its origin in the human imagination. All the mythologies of romanticism share this feature in common. They are ongoing works in progress, as alive today as they were over two centuries ago. The mythologies of romanticism are like paintings left deliberately unfinished by a painter, with the hope that we will feel inspired to pick up the brush and contribute our own complex patterns of color. 

_{Featured image by The Cleveland Museum of Art via Unsplash.}

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The Alexander Mosaic: Greek history and Roman memories

Perhaps the finest representation of battle to survive from antiquity, the Alexander Mosaic conveys all the confusion and violence of ancient warfare. It also exemplifies how elite patrons across diverse artistic cultures commission artworks that draw inspiration from and celebrate past and present events important to the community. Specificity of visual imagery (e.g., identifiable protagonists, carefully rendered details, and inscriptions) combined with commemorative intent differentiates historical subjects from scenes conceived generically or drawn from daily life. In celebrating events meaningful to those holding power, historical subjects are propagandistic in that they foster a supremely favorable conception of those responsible for their creation. Yet no matter how carefully makers try to control the message, artworks can acquire an autonomy that permits audiences to construct “memories” of those events never intended.

Properly speaking, the Alexander Mosaic’s manufacture comprises Roman work, but most scholars believe it reflects a lost painting described by Pliny the Elder: “Philoxenos of Eretria painted a picture for King Cassander which must be considered second to none, which represented the battle of Alexander against Darius” (NH 35.110). This would date to ca. 330-310 BC, when memories of the battle were still fresh, and its propaganda value would be most effective. That painting may have been brought to Italy as plunder after the Roman conquest of Macedonia in 146 BC. The fact that the mosaic reproduces an earlier work for a later audience forces us to consider the discrepancies between historical narrative and artistic tradition.

All of the surviving accounts of Alexander’s conquests were written against the background of Roman imperialism, and ancient readers necessarily interpreted what they read in the light of the social and political structures that characterized their age. Alexander “the Great” was a Roman creation: the title first appears in a Roman comedy by Plautus in the early second century BC. Because historical representations are distinctive and clearly recognizable to contemporary viewers, since its discovery in the House of the Faun at Pompeii in 1831, scholars have had to reckon with how the mosaic’s imagery functioned in two very different contexts: first as a fourth-century Greek painting and then as a first-century Roman mosaic. A painting celebrating a Macedonian victory meant something quite distinct when originally displayed in a Hellenistic palace than when it was possibly displayed as war booty in a Roman temple; and the mosaic copy in a Roman private house would carry still different significance. For a Roman audience, the commemorative specificity of the battle scene was probably less important than celebrating the qualities of Alexander’s personality that spoke to them: his ferocity in battle, his charisma, and his military genius. Alexander was as much a part of the cultural memory of Rome as Homeric epic was for Greece, providing a paradigm for their own military triumphs.

Heinrich Fuhrmann first suggested that the Roman patron of the artwork had participated in the Macedonian Wars, and that this mosaic copy of a spoil of war functioned as both a sign of his admiration for the “greatest” general and perpetuated the memory of his own role in overthrowing the dynasty that Alexander founded. A Roman viewer might have imagined a broader reenactment of the paradigmatic conflict between East and West, a conflict he may have participated in or merely appreciated through the lens of Roman ideology. Given the Roman taste for the allusive, a history become anachronistic could have also been appropriated and meaningfully reused through a cognitive metaphor whereby in place of Alexander’s empire, Roman viewers could have understood their own (since Rome had conquered the territories formerly occupied by Macedonia). Roman sources repeatedly compare Roman campaigns on the eastern frontier with earlier Greek struggles. Given that Parthia, which had fought on the Persian side against Alexander, was now Rome’s enemy in the east and Alexander’s legacy was now Roman, a Roman viewer could have easily identified with the Greeks. Furthermore, the patron who commissioned the mosaic copy belonged to the new Roman ruling class, which appropriated older Greek artworks—the fruits of their conquest—to express social status. It was prominently featured in a luxury dwelling, of a type also of Greek origin, whose colonnaded courtyards and receptions rooms were sumptuously decorated with other paintings and sculptures meant to impress visitors. Its Roman owner may even have appreciated the Alexander Mosaic as a “work of art”: an image divorced from its original context by its new role in a Roman social performance.

When artworks reconstruct a past in order to explain the present, their makers determine which events are remembered and rearrange them to conform to the required social narrative. Their display provides visible manifestations of collective memories. More than merely passive reflections, monuments with historical subjects reinforce those memories and confer them prestige. Divergent motivations were again in evidence after the Alexander Mosaic’s discovery when various European leaders such as the Prussian King Fredrick Wilhelm IV ordered copies of the copy: was the motivation for such modern commissions the desire for prestige achieved through association with a masterpiece from antiquity or with the political symbolism of its historical subject?

_{Featured image: Alexander Mosaic (ca. 100 BCE), Naples, Museo archeologico nazionale. Berthold Werner via Wikimedia Commons.}

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From Abbas Ibn Firnas to Assassin’s Creed: The legacy of Medieval intellectualism

The dream of flying has a long premodern history. Think of the myth of Daedalus, the ancient Greek inventor who designed wings for himself, and his ill-fated son Icarus. Or think of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous sketches and studies of birds and flying devices.

It might surprise many to know that, centuries before Leonardo da Vinci depicted birds in flight and flying machines in Renaissance Italy, an intrepid polymath in the city of Córdoba, in today’s Spain, may have carried out an experiment in early human gliding flight. My book, A Bridge to the Sky, focuses on that intrepid ninth-century aeronaut, Abbas Ibn Firnas, and the Islamic civilization that provides the backdrop and context for his life and work. As a specialist in medieval Islamic architecture, art, and history during the caliphal period (c.650-1250 CE) most of my work has focused on Córdoba, the capital of early Islamic Iberia. In A Bridge to the Sky I set out to understand Ibn Firnas’ unusual experiment, to try to understand why an intellectual in a medieval Islamic context imagined and then is reported by his contemporaries to have carried out such an unusual experiment, and why this might be significant for the way we understand the past. 

Like the prototypical “Renaissance Man” Leonardo, with whom he is often compared, Ibn Firnas was a person of many talents: a poet, a musician, a philosopher, and a ‘scientist’ who designed fine scientific instruments for the Umayyad dynasty who ruled Córdoba and Iberia between the 8^th and 11^th centuries. He carried out fascinating experiments and activities that combine science and art, including designing and creating a chamber in his home that sounds very much like the medieval version of a 3D immersive Virtual Reality experience: famously, this experience made ninth century viewers imagine they were seeing stars, lightning, and clouds, and hearing thunder.

My book introduces readers to Ibn Firnas and his flight experiment, against the backdrop of caliphal artistic and intellectual cultures. Those who play the new Assassin’s Creed Mirage video game will find a different type of introduction in the game’s setting, its characters, and the historical information contained in its Codex.

The connections between my book and the game are reflective of my work as an external historian on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which was released by Ubisoft in October 2023. The narrative setting of Mirage is Baghdad in the ninth century, and my role was to provide the Ubisoft in-house historians with detailed historical information about medieval Baghdad and Islamic art, history, and civilisation in the caliphal period.

The topics and entries represented in the game’s educational feature, known as the “History of Baghdad,” were chosen by Ubisoft’s historians, and were based on a series of thematic workshops that were very like an intensive graduate research seminar on the history and visual culture of the caliphal period. Out of those workshops, the Ubisoft team chose things they thought were important to include, focusing on art and the exact sciences (especially astronomy and engineering), all of which are central to A Bridge to the Sky.

For instance, players of Mirage can read about astrolabes, celestial globes, and other scientific instruments of the time, and see these illustrated in the Codex, much as they are in my book. In the game they’ll encounter astronomers, an astronomical observatory, and references to important treatises, including ones on astronomy, engineering, mathematics, and other exact sciences, which I write about in A Bridge to the Sky.

In A Bridge to the Sky, I write about the Banu Musa, three intellectual brothers who were ninth-century contemporaries of Ibn Firnas. Important Abbasid courtiers in Baghdad, they are especially well known for their work in engineering, thanks to their important treatise, The book of ingenious devices (Kitāb al-ḥiyal). In Mirage, players have the chance to ‘meet’ the Banu Musa, who provide Mirage’s protagonist, Basim, with ingenious tools and mechanical devices. Indeed, one of the game quests has players seeking one of the brothers, Ahmad, in the House of Wisdom, and investigating his workshop there.

I’ll leave it to players to learn if Ibn Firnas makes an appearance in the game, though I will say that players who go looking will find intriguing references to a flight experiment.

While working on a video game might be an unusual choice for a scholar, my reasons for doing so are the same ones that led me to write a Bridge to the Sky—a desire to make academic knowledge about medieval Islamic art and history widely accessible to broader audiences. In that sense my book and Assassin’s Creed Mirage are quite similar. Both depict a vibrant age of scientific and artistic achievement in which caliphal intellectuals imagined, created, and experimented with art and science, and which shares many similarities with later times and places, such as Renaissance Florence, with which today we are much more familiar. My hope is that readers of A Bridge to the Sky and those who follow Basim in his adventures through Baghdad in Mirage will come away with a new appreciation for the Age of the Caliphs and a period of medieval intellectual and artistic innovation that profoundly shaped global history, including Italy in the age of Leonardo, and eventually Europe’s Scientific Revolution.

_{Feature image by Imre Solt. CC3.0. GFDL.}

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Albrecht Dürer and the commercialization of art

The Nuremberg artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is often thought of as one of the Renaissance´s greatest self-promoters. He might even be categorized as a “reputational entrepreneur.” Dürer was the first artist to depict himself on self-standing portrait panels. These three portraits now hang in some of Europe´s most important collections—the Louvre, the Prado, and Munich´s Alte Pinakothek—and frame our own image of him. Most strikingly, the German artist depicted himself on the last of these as almost identical to Christ. To many, the portraits hint at his arrogance and the type of Renaissance self-centeredness that culminates in the selfie culture of today. 

Dürer’s portrayals can be understood through the rise of the art market. Anything recognizably done by his hand fetched better prices than what came out of a workshop as collaborative effort. To develop a distinctive approach to art, Dürer cultivated his mastery of depicting hair naturalistically with the finest brushes. Dürer turned his own hairstyle into something iconic—by 1500 he sported long, curled hair with golden highlights. It is thought that he kept his last, Christ-like self-portrait at home to attract clients. In relation to his printed work, Dürer fought hard to get a copyright on his monogram. Why? He was not a court artist, salaried and dressed by a ruler, but lived from what he made and sold, day-by-day.  

It is easily overlooked therefore that there was great precarity to his life for much of his career. What looks like arrogance was bound up with fear and assertion out of anger against mean patrons. Becoming a painter, in the first place, had been a precarious decision. His passion for painting had cost Dürer a secure career as goldsmith, for which his father had trained him up from the age of five. Dürer the Elder was devastated when his teenage son told him that he did not wish to take over the workshop but wished to switch careers. Young Albrecht loved the vibrant paintings in Nuremberg´s churches. The most ambitious of these were grand altarpieces with their complex compositions and great spiritual power in the age before the Reformation. The end of the Middle Ages was marked by intense piety and the expectation that great religious images could bring to life what they depicted and could spiritually heal. A painter was a therapist of sorts, a healer of souls through his union with God and Christ, in whose image mankind had been created.

Fast forward to 1509, when Dürer was in his late thirties. He had been brilliantly successful in making innovative printed images and in getting recognized. His prints sold down to Rome. He achieved praise for an altar-painting in Venice that demonstrated his mastery of colours. German scholars lauded him as equal to the Greek master painter Apelles. Working on a new commission—an altar-painting for a rich Frankfurt merchant—Dürer felt ever more frustrated. What a gap between his reputation and his lack of cash to buy a nice house, nice clothes, and food, and to simply ensure that he and his family felt financially secure. He put a portrait of himself right in the centre background of the painting.  “Do you know what my living expenses are?”, he challenged the merchant.

The question remains meaningful. Some think of artists as aesthetes whose moral purity and vision should be bound up with being disinterest in money. The British contemporary artist Damien Hirst by contrast is well known for his commercial success and for being open about his wish to be rich. Why, he tells us in an interview, should artists suffer, like van Gogh? “I think it´s tragic,” he says, “that great artists die penniless.” Hirst thinks that Andy Warhol was the first to make it ok for artists to be commercially minded without appearing as a “sellout.” Hirst would admire Dürer if he went further back in time.

Dürer resisted dying penniless and mentally tormented—something which would happen to so many well and little-known artists who refused to play the art market in the Renaissance and supposed Golden Age of art that followed it. Adam Elsheimer, a pioneering German landscape artist in Rome around 1600 is a less well-known example; Jan Vermeer remains the most famous pre-modern artist whose own life and fortune of his small family ended in tragedy.

Dürer, by contrast, died a rich man—today he would be a millionaire. He saved up most of his assets, though, so strong was his need to feel financially secure after decades of living on loans for greater expenditures and paying in installments. Up to the end of his life, he accounted for pennies of expenditure, noting down when his wife bought a broom or he purchased cheap pigments made from red bricks. This was despite the fact that the couple had no children to leave an inheritance for.

Dürer´s late financial success came at a price though. Despite writing nine letters to the Frankfurt merchant in 1508 and 1509 to explain what was involved in painting an altarpiece well and would constitute a fair price, Dürer failed to achieve what he regarded as decent pay. The experience left him scarred, and the artist´s decision was radical: he would no longer take on commissions for new altarpieces. Imagine if a composer of complex symphonies, or a writer of novels, suddenly stopped work while at the top of their game. Understanding such transformative decisions opens a new window onto Dürer and his age when patterns of consumption and commerce changed. Succeeding as an artist meant experiencing losses and gains. The birth of the artist in the Renaissance was bound up with rich emotions and challenging adjustments to the rules of the market, even for the most established of artists. Dürer´s amazingly innovative prints, such as his “Melencolia I” in 1514, demonstrate that he never became a sell-out. Still, his life is full of questions for our own time and for an artist like Hirst—the first to go as far as giving collectors the choice of burning original paintings as they buy its version as a digital asset, an NFT. The NFT includes a hologram portrait of the artist. Dürer most likely would have approved.

Feature Image: Albrecht Dürer, ‘Self-portrait’, Museo Nacional del Prado. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Falling dice and falling ministers: explaining an artwork in the Royal Collection 

This curious drawing in the Royal Collection, attributed to William Hogarth but possibly by Phillipe Mercier, depicts a game of hazard, the ancestor of modern casino “craps.” An attribution to Mercier is supported by the figure of a young man wearing an order of chivalry (possibly the Garter, although the ribbon is worn over the wrong shoulder) who bears a strong resemblance to Mercier’s portraits of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Mercier was appointed painter to the Prince and Princess of Wales soon after the accession of George II allowed Frederick to set up his own household.

The staffage of the drawing is unusual, given the subject matter. Women as well as men sit at the hazard table, despite the strictures of Richard Steele that throwing dice was not ladylike. Even more remarkable is the clergyman who holds the dice box. Given the august company, he might be a bishop, and in fact, closely resembles Hogarth’s portrait of Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Salisbury and later of Winchester. There are not many circumstances that would explain how, in the words of Frances Burney, these individuals became so strangely situated.

One such is Twelfth Night, 5 January, as it was observed at court, when the sovereign, Royal Family, and courtiers played hazard for the benefit of the Groom Porter, the court official charged with procuring and dispensing small furnishings. Since these could include cards and dice, the Groom Porter was inextricably associated with games of chance at court, as the final authority, for example, on the rules of games. The drawing may be an unfinished sketch for a painting, never undertaken, to commemorate the revels of a particular Twelfth Night, that of January 1731, whence our story.

The years after the Hanoverian Succession saw a concerted effort to suppress gambling operations, such as tables for hazard and faro, conducted in taverns, coffeehouses, and other public accommodations in London and Westminster. Apart from any moral hazard they posed (and there were admonitions aplenty in print culture), the “silver tables” at Vanderman’s coffeehouse in Covent Garden or at the Phoenix tavern in the Haymarket were competition for the Government’s own gaming operations, the lotteries it used to fund public works, freeing up other revenue to bankroll an expanding military and naval establishment.

Spurred by Charles, second Viscount Townshend, holder of the office that evolved into the Home Secretary, the magistrates of Westminster (where most of these gambling parlors were housed) authorized raids on premises determined to be “common” (i.e. public) “gaming houses” open to all comers in violation of statute. The magistrates were thwarted, however, at every turn by resourceful, well-connected, and above all well-lawyered gambling entrepreneurs, as adept at gaming the system as they were at reaping the benefits that mathematical probability afforded them.

It did not help that gambling went forward with impunity at court, as the royal household was explicitly exempted from all legislation aimed at proscribing or regulating games of chance. Townshend deployed all of the powers of his office to support the prosecution of gaming operations, authorizing the Crown’s attorneys to defend constables at public expense when gaming entrepreneurs sued them, and funding rewards for those who informed on gaming operators. A widely circulated pamphlet recounting the efforts of the Westminster magistrates and the obstacles they faced apparently originated in Townshend’s office.

George I and (briefly) George II were evidently pressed to set an example, and for the decade of the 1720s, hazard was banished from the Twelfth Night revels in favor of ombre, a polite card game played for relatively low stakes. By the end of that decade, however, Townshend had fallen out with the Prime Minster, Sir Robert Walpole, who happened to be his brother-in-law, and by the spring of 1730, Townshend had resigned, returning to Raynham in Norfolk to promote the cultivation of turnips. Raids on gaming venues slowed dramatically, ceasing entirely by 1735. And no sooner was Townshend out of office than hazard immediately resumed on Twelfth Night at court, with the King, Queen, Prince of Wales, and the three princesses winning nearly a thousand guineas among themselves. Hazard continued as the game of preference as Twelfth Night was observed at court for at least the next decade, even after subsequent legislation outlawed it, along with basset and faro, as an illegal lottery.

The sketch in the Royal Collection certainly looks like a study for the sort of conversation piece for which Hogarth was particularly known, and which Mercier was known to have undertaken as well. Assuming that Twelfth Night of 1731 was the intended subject, there may have been any number of reasons that the project was abandoned. Newspaper reports of the revival of hazard at court festivities that week in January appeared in the same issues as accounts of raids on gaming venues; not long afterward, Captain William Bradbury, the recently ousted deputy to the Groom Porter Thomas Archer, wrote letters to newspapers threatening to expose his former employer. It was not the time to draw attention to this sort of courtly practice. What might seem to courtiers to be a harmless seasonal amusement might look to the public like insupportable hypocrisy.

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Bringing museum collections to life

“Would you have a dried specimen of a world, or a pickled one?”

On 24 September 1843, the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau recorded a fairly long critique of natural history museums in his journal. Best known for Walden (1854) and other environmental writings, it is not entirely surprising that Thoreau would have mixed feelings about museums, where plants, animals, and other objects were being rapidly accumulated to serve the study of science. “I hate museums,” he wrote. “They are the catacombs of nature…They are dead nature collected by dead men.” Describing a visit to the Boston Society of Natural History (the predecessor of the Museum of Science in Boston), he noted only a sense of detachment: “I walk amid those jars of bloated creatures which they label frogs, a total stranger, without the least froggy thought being suggested.”

Thoreau’s reflections are especially noteworthy as we mark International Museum Day this month. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has declared a focus for 2023 on sustainability, well-being, and community. Noting the significant position of museums “as trusted institutions and important threads in our shared social fabric,” ICOM emphasizes their “transformative potential” for shaping larger conversations about climate change, global health, and other pressing issues. This year’s International Museum Day marks an opportunity, in ICOM’s words, to imagine the possibilities that museums can play “in shaping and creating sustainable futures.”

We can better understand what it might take for museums to create such futures by looking more closely at their past. The earliest museums were the cabinets of curiosities owned by early modern collectors. Often the product of an individual’s distinct interests, they included “natural and artificial curiosities” such as natural history specimens, works of art and other printed materials, and anthropological objects. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many early museums continued this vision, bringing together numerous kinds and categories of objects with the goal of promoting “useful knowledge” through the study and close examination of collections. The cases and cabinets filled with objects increasingly represented knowledge itself, seen in visual and tangible form. Their founders emphasized the value of studying material objects as a way to learn about numerous subjects. They imagined the “spark” that might result from studying objects, the new ideas that could emerge, and the exciting possibilities of placing different objects—and the minds of observers—in conversation.

Around the time that Thoreau was professing his hatred of natural history museums, these institutions were undergoing major shifts in their purpose and scope. Some museums were moving in the direction of emphasizing education and expanding public access. Nonetheless, this was a fairly slow and somewhat mixed process. Many objects in museum collections were the direct result of colonial ventures and systems of exploitation, theft, and violence around the world. Labeled as “curiosities” by white collectors, they were used to promote inaccurate information and racist misconceptions. Even when museum galleries opened to a wider public, the authority to interpret objects still rested with elite white men. It was during this period that the term “scientist” was first coined, reflecting growing disciplinary specialization and professionalization within the scientific community. Nonetheless, many collections continued to combine numerous fields, bringing together works of art, natural history, anthropology, and more. Museums were undergoing a process of transformation, but it remained incomplete and reflected an uncertain future for these institutions.

Wandering amid the “jars of bloated creatures” in a museum gallery, Thoreau was not as distant from these collections as he claimed in writing. He donated numerous specimens to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and the Boston Society of Natural History, including fish, turtles, and birds’ eggs. He struggled with the ethics of his own scientific practices, seeking to balance between the close observation and “useful knowledge” afforded by stilled specimens and his preference for observing a living creature. In his journals, he often recorded lengthy descriptions of the turtles living near Walden Pond, marveling at their appearance and making detailed notes about their behavior. In addition to these writings, however, a turtle that he donated to the Museum of Comparative Zoology still remains suspended in alcohol in a glass jar, much like those he observed during his own visits to museums. Taken together, his writings and specimens show how he wrestled with different modes of studying his surrounding environment, recording his observations, and participating in broader scientific practices throughout his career.

As museums today look to expand their commitments to sustainability, well-being, and community, we can look to their history to understand both the challenges and possibilities of the work that lies ahead. Thoreau’s dilemma highlights the ongoing question about how to use museum collections to explore and better understand our surrounding world. At the same time, his criticisms perhaps unexpectedly reflect the kind of “spark” that museum founders once hoped to see resulting from the accumulated knowledge in their collections. Then and now, visitors to museums continue to play an important role in advocating for ethical practices and drawing connections to contemporary issues. As museums today imagine transformative change, they might continue to look to their own communities to participate in these broader conversations. In this way, “a dried specimen of a world” can continue to take on new life.

_{Feature image: London Natural History Museum by Kafai Liu. Public domain via Unsplash.}

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Leonardo and the Salvator Mundi: fame and infamy

Typing a search term into Google prompts a useful feature called “People also ask.” It’s a query expansion tool, designed to optimize high-traffic keyword searches. When people ask me about the Salvator Mundi, just like Google, I can predict the questions they will “also ask.” Top of the list: do I think the painting is a “real” Leonardo? My go-to answer paraphrases (the then) Prince Charles’s infamous equivocation about the nature of romantic love. “It’s a real Leonardo,” I say, “whatever that means.” This may sound wantonly facetious, but it’s not. What I mean is that the painting broadly corresponds, in materials, technique, and approach, to the small group of paintings accepted to be by Leonardo da Vinci; that is, the established canon of his works. 

Is the Salvator Mundi a “real” Leonardo da Vinci?

The attribution of the Salvator Mundi to Leonardo is uncontroversial among most of the key specialists. We can plot their views on a sliding scale ranging from “execution by the sole hand of Leonardo” at one pole, to “execution by Leonardo with varying degrees of input from a studio assistant” at the other. Art historians tend to allow a degree of elasticity about such categories, in recognition of the abundant evidence of collaborative practices in the Renaissance workshop. The “market,” on the other hand, inculcates more rigid classifications. The standard glossaries and legal disclaimers of major auction houses impose a strict hierarchy organized according to proximity to a given artist’s hand. The internal categories are sharply delineated, and, accordingly, are confirmed in differentials of monetary values. A work described as by “Significant Italian Renaissance Artist” will usually achieve a higher hammer price, sometimes in the order of millions, than an otherwise equivalent work described as by “Significant Italian Renaissance Artist and Workshop.” 

The intense public interest in the Salvator Mundi, and whether or not the painting should be attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, is a product not only of its re-emergence during the internet age, but also its achievement of the world record price for a work of art at public auction ($450,000,000, 15 November 2017, Christie’s, New York). A moment of spectacular congress between the Academy and the Market, the sale led many to question the process by which the canon of Leonardo is established and policed. While any new attribution to Leonardo has, since at least the nineteenth century, instigated public debate, modern media conditions—the live broadcast of the auction, the near-universal access to the internet, the algorithms designed to polarise opinion online—serve to promote and amplify controversy. 

Still, the question of what exactly comprises “a Leonardo” is fascinating and imperative. It relies on the construction of his artistic persona over the course of five hundred years, in a variety of locations, and against the backdrop of gradually widening access to, and understanding of, his writings.

Why is Leonardo da Vinci the world’s most famous artist?

That leads to the second question “people also ask” me: Why is Leonardo the world’s most famous artist? In one sense, it’s because he got a head start in the fame game, by writing himself into the narrative. The years he spent at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan (c.1483-90) were undoubtedly instrumental to Leonardo’s budding reputation. It is there that we see him jostling for place among a gaggle of official sonneteers. Embedded in the cut-and-thrust, he is an actor in the performance of paragone. He inhabits the poetry of his literary rivals and collaborators; their paeans to his portraits are littered with Neoplatonic tropes and Petrarchan allusions. Bernardo Bellincioni extols the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine): “the supreme talent and hand of Leonardo” rivals Nature. Gasparo Visconti remarks waspishly that in painting others, Leonardo always portrays himself. Moreover, he is easily distracted, “his brain goes wandering each time the moon wanes.” By the turn of the sixteenth century we find Leonardo not only acclaimed the “New Apelles,” but, like the famous ancient Greek painter’s rival, Protogenes, we hear that he “spends many years to complete [a panel].” We can, perhaps, detect Leonardo’s agency in these poem-portraits. They iterated the Plinian model of fame, promoted comparisons between himself and his classical forebears, and raised his profile among the select circles of the Milanese court. 

Nor is the eulogizing of Leonardo in early print media unconnected to the promotion of Florentine—and Medici—interests. It is no coincidence that his chief advocates were fellow denizens of the Tuscan city. Ugolino Verino, who tutored Giovanni de’ Medici (later Pope Leo X), praised Leonardo in An Illustration of the City of Florence (1503); he was “possibly” pre-eminent among a number of prominent artists. It was Giorgio Vasari who, in his seminal biography of 1550, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, formulated the canonical Leonardo, and provided the definitive early statement of his celebrity: “the fame of his name so spread abroad that, not only was he valued in his own day, but his renown has greatly increased since his death.” Yet, while Vasari reserved his greatest praise for the “divine” Michelangelo, it is Leonardo who holds sway in the public’s mind as the most famous artist of all time. Why should this be?

The key to Leonardo’s singular celebrity is, I think, his adaptability; he is re-invented by each era according to its particular concerns. There are many Leonardos. There is the Leonardo of Leonardo himself, the Leonardo of Bellincioni and the poets, of Vasari, Lomazzo, Richter, Pater, Freud, Clark, Gombrich, Kemp, Google. So, we have Leonardo the useful, the engineer with a side hustle as painter and sculptor. We have Leonardo the resourceful autodidact, keeping up with the humanists at the ducal, papal, and royal courts. We have Leonardo the flawed genius, incapable of finishing a task. We have Leonardo the ideal artist-scientist of the Enlightenment. We have Leonardo the universal man of modernity. We have Leonardo the queer technological visionary of post-modernity. 

This phenomenon derives from Vasari’s sketch of the light and shade of Leonardo, his ingenuity, but also his “faults” (he’s easily distracted, never finishes a task). A sixteenth-century audience would have appreciated the allusions to celebrated ancient painters; later generations found the discussion of character and psychology appealing. Flaws and failings humanize Leonardo, they make him “relatable” to modern audiences. 

As Martin Kemp notes in a foreword  to an edition of Leonardo’s treatise on painting, The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura, (Leiden: Brill, 2018, 2 vols; vol. 1, xi.), “Inevitably we tend to project the Leonardo we know today into past eras. […] Until the late nineteenth century, ‘our’ Leonardo was not known.” The gaps and mysteries in our knowledge only serve to promote the continual reformulation of Leonardo. Paul Valéry, in his seminal 1895 essay on Leonardo, confessed that, knowing very little about him, he had invented a Leonardo of his own. Perhaps that is what everyone does. 

We can credit the received canon of Leonardo’s paintings in large part to Vasari. His Life mentions 11 works (one a collaboration with Verrocchio) that are tentatively identifiable with extant paintings and drawings by Leonardo/his workshop. Of these, six can be confirmed with some conviction. This small catalogue defines what we have come to think of as “a Leonardo.” Most of all, we measure by the yardstick that is the Mona Lisa.

Why is there no account of the Salvator Mundi in early sources?

Vasari does not mention a painting corresponding to a Salvator Mundi. This brings us to the other question “people also ask”: Why is there no account of this now-famous painting in the early sources on Leonardo? Does this mean he did not paint it? 

The painting has become a celebrity in its own right, but it was obscure before 2011. To borrow a famous phrase, it was a “known unknown,” a “hypothetical Leonardo.” There is no mention of such a work in the early biographical sources; no eyewitness account. The first published association of the name of Leonardo da Vinci and an image of a mature, frontal Christ dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, when it was inscribed in the legend of Wenceslaus Hollar’s etching: “Leonardo da Vinci pinxit, Wenceslaus Hollar fecit Acqua forti, secundum Originale. A^O 1650.” 

The current fame of the Salvator is bound up with the fame of Leonardo, and indivisible from the $450,000,000 price tag. It is, therefore, a significant object in the public’s imagination. There is a natural expectation of some early record of its creation or ownership. Surely it was famous in its own day? What are we to make of the lack of documentation of the Salvator? 

First, we should remind ourselves that the Last Supper is the only painting by Leonardo that has a continuous history, for reasons that are self-explanatory. Second, that plotting the movements of a small object made of wood and paint over the course of half a millennium is inescapably problematic. Third, that a canon is a construct, not a fact. 

Leonardo’s canon is a citadel against which any new attribution must be attempted. Martin Kemp’s coining of the Salvator Mundi “the male Mona Lisa” deftly posited the painting in direct relation to Leonardo’s most canonical work. In doing so, he unwittingly provoked the resonant by-line annexed by Christie’s to market the painting in 2017. 

Speaking to USA Today ahead of the auction, Francois de Poortere enthused, “This is the holy grail of Old Master paintings, some people call it the male Mona Lisa. People are deeply taken by this work. You could buy it and just build an entire museum around it.” His words seem to have exerted a powerful influence on the winning bidder, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, to judge by his apparent, and ultimately frustrated, desire to have the two paintings hang side-by-side in the Louvre, and his reported plan to exhibit the Salvator in a dedicated museum in Saudi Arabia.

Discover more about Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in this three-part blog series.

_{Featured image: The Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi LLC (used with permission)}

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Salvator Mundi: the journey of a false saviour

Discovering the provenance of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi formed a significant part of the book that I co-authored with Margaret Dalivalle and Martin Kemp. Determining which records and references pertained to the original and which to the many copies and derivations of the painting required the unraveling of dozens of documentary threads, intertwined and occasionally knotted, stretching across the centuries.

While Leonardo’s original was the focus in the book, a look at one of the rejected threads can provide insight into the changing state of connoisseurship of the artist’s paintings, as well as the art market (and its occasionally hyperbolic promotional language) during the nineteenth century.

The earliest mention of the handsome Salvator Mundi now in the Detroit Institute of Arts was at a Christie’s auction on 16 June 1821, where it was described as follows:

L. Da Vinci, The Salvator Mundi—This rare and admirable performance of the great master was painted for Francis the First, and was formerly preserved in the Abbaye de St. Denys, near Paris.

Since it was widely known that Leonardo died at Francis I’s court in Amboise (legendarily in the King’s arms) while serving as his “first painter and engineer,” it would seem quite plausible that such a clearly devotional painting could have descended to the Cathedral of St-Denis, the traditional burial site of French royalty (including Francis I). The destruction and looting of the interior of St-Denis during the French Revolution, which had occurred less than 30 years prior to the auction, provided both an explanation for the painting’s appearance in London and perhaps an enticement for an opportunistic purchaser.

The cover of the sale catalogue described the consignor as “a well-known amateur, who has indulged his taste in collecting for a series of years, by selecting from the most distinguished cabinets offered in this country, besides purchasing abroad, and who is about to leave England for the Continent.” The catalogue further advises, “Many of these pictures have never before been seen in this country: among them … [in a larger font and all caps] “A SALVATOR MUNDI BY L. DA VINCI, A RARE AND PRECIOUS SPECIMEN OF THE HIGHEST MERIT.”

An annotated copy of the catalogue designates the “well-known amateur” as a Mr Parke—identifiable as John Parke, a celebrated oboist (1745-1829) and sometime dealer, truly a marchand amateur, who was a frequent buyer and seller at auction from the 1790s on. The painting was lot 63 in the sale and was “put up at 800 guineas,” according to the annotated catalogue, but was unsold. This was an extraordinary price, worthy of a Leonardo original, especially when compared with the top lot in the sale, Rembrandt’s Dismissal of Hagar, which sold for 105 guineas. (That painting, now considered to be from Rembrandt’s workshop, is in the Victoria & Albert Museum).

We do not know whether John Parke in fact left for the Continent as advertised or whether the sale was a consequence of Parke’s indebtedness, which would lead to his imprisonment two years later in the Marshalsea, the notorious debtor’s prison in Southwark. In any case the painting remained in Parke’s possession, and following his death in 1829, it appeared in an 11 March 1835, auction at the “directions of the Executor of the late John Parke, Esq., of Dean-street.” The auction, by George Robins of Covent Garden, was advertised with a kind of timeless hype: the paintings offered were “reserved gems of the highly-gifted owner and which it had been intended should descend to posterity. Circumstances now direct their submitted, without the aid of any fancy or protecting price, to the liberal patronage of those who delight in the fine arts, and more especially that portion that prefer the old school.” Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!

The catalogue entry for the painting spared no praise:

Leonardo da Vinci, Head of Christ. The sublime aspect of the Saviour, so placid—so serene—and yet so firm in intellect, indeed with a mind more than human, yet compassionating human infirmities—superior to all, but disregarding none. These, as far as pencil can portray, Da Vinci has represented. The glass globe held in the Saviour’s hand, at once the emblem of universality, and of that mind to which the Universe itself is but a transparent bubble, is indeed a sublime idea, and the direct front view of the figure gives a majesty which proclaims the original far above human frailty. The coloring of this picture is so deep and rich, and yet so true to nature, that it leaves other works, even of the same artist, at an unreasonable distance; and the exquisite drawing and finish of every part place it among the most extraordinary performances in existence. This picture was in the collection of the King of France, at St. Denis, before the Revolution, and is carefully described in the catalogue now preserved in the French library. It was engraved by Hollar, and an impression (now very rare) is seen with the picture. The picture was purchased by Mr. Parke, in October 1826, from a French gentleman who then brought it from the Continent, and it has never before been offered for public sale.

While the entry added another inviting detail—that the work was that engraved by (Wenceslaus) Hollar, as the original indeed was—that information, like the fact that the painting had never been offered at auction before and that it was purchased in 1826 (we know that it was offered for sale five years earlier) was as false as the statement that there was no “protecting price”—that is, a reserve price—at the auction. All five paintings remained unsold.

They reappeared a year later at Christie’s (26 March 1836) but were withdrawn and re-offered on 7 May 1836, this time designated as the property of Henry Parke, John’s architect son, who had died in 1835. Henry began his career as a marine painter but is largely known as one of the principal draughtsmen in the employ of Sir John Soane. Again, none of the paintings sold, and we can only suspect that the family’s conviction that their Salvator Mundi was Leonardo’s original and deserving of a commensurate price (and auction reserve) was not shared by the collecting public.

The paintings presumably passed to Henry’s daughter Katherine Parke, but there is no further record of the Salvator Mundi until 1865, when it appeared in an auction of “pictures removed from Mr. Cox’s British Gallery”—a commercial art gallery operated for 40 years by William Cox. A notice sounding very much like an advertisement in the Pall-Mall Gazette of 11 December 1865, stated “Mr. Cox’s British Gallery in Pall-Mall, which is composed of the works of old masters and deceased British artists, and is one of the permanent attractions of the metropolis, will afford the curious visitor an hour’s special entertainment. Here he may find scarce works and early performances of distinguished painters; and many mature efforts of great power and renown. Some which have passed through many hands, and whose very history is romantic, may be seen in this collection.” 

The sale, held by Foster on 13-14 December 1865, presented the Salvator Mundi as lot 107, described as by Leonardo da Vinci, with the following note: 

From the Collection of Mr. Parkes [sic]. This Picture was procured from a French gentleman by Mr. Parke and remained in the possession of his heirs until purchased by Mr. Cox; it was bought in at a public auction in 1821 for 800 guineas. Engraved by Hollar, and mentioned in the Catalogue of the French Library as belonging to the Kings of France until the period of the Revolution in 1789. Size 26 ½ in. by 19.

An annotated copy of the catalogue states that the painting had sold for 100 guineas, but that seems to have been misdirection to obscure yet another auction failure, as the painting reappeared 24 years later at a Christie’s sale comprising paintings consigned by Mrs. Cox, presumably William’s widow. Lot 134 in the 6 April 1889 sale was simply listed without the earlier promotional persiflage: “L. Da Vinci…Salvator Mundi / From the Collection of Mr. Park [sic], 1821”). It was sold to a certain Dean or Deacon, who purchased the painting on behalf of the publisher and philanthropist James E. Scripps. The price paid was 62 guineas (£65-1), far from the 800 guinea reserve of 1821. By contrast the National Gallery had purchased Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks from the Earl of Suffolk for £9,000 in 1879, then the highest price paid for a work of art, even though occurring at a historic low point in the art market.

The British-born Scripps had moved to America at an early age, become a journalist and founded what was to become the Detroit News. His experience and travels, especially following a five-month trip through Europe in 1881, emboldened him to form a collection of representative Old Master paintings, which he would donate to the newly-formed Detroit Museum of Art (now Detroit Institute of Arts) in 1889. In the catalogue that Scripps himself wrote, and in subsequent museum catalogues, the Salvator Mundi was listed with pride but due caution as “attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.”

Later scholarly opinion placed the painting among Leonardo’s students and associates. Berenson attributed it to Marco d’Oggiono, then Giampietrino. Others have suggested Leonardo’s acolyte Salaì, though Giampietrino is most frequently cited as the painting’s author and is how the painting is currently catalogued by the museum. However, recent dating of the picture through   analysis of the growth rings of its Baltic oak support (dendrochronology) have established that the earliest felling date of the tree from which it came was 1569, and the earliest likely date for the painting (following travel and seasoning) would be 1571—long after the demise of Giampietrino and Leonardo’s other students. 

The precise repetition of several details from Leonardo’s painting in the Detroit Salvator Mundi suggests that its author had direct knowledge of the original—likely in France in the early seventeenth century. Still there remain evident compositional differences between the two: the later Christ has a fuller beard, normalized and symmetrized features, and changes in color and ornament to the costume that likely reflect contemporary stylistic and devotional preferences. While this Salvator may lack some of the power, aura, and subtlety of Leonardo’s painting, it retains a remarkable appeal, both as a reflection of the original and as an effective work of art. It is gratifying to know that after many years in storage at the Detroit Institute, this “rare and admirable performance” has recently returned to public view.

Discover more about Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in this three-part blog series.

_{Featured image: The Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi LLC (used with permission)}

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<em>Salvator Mundi</em>: poor picture, poor Leonardo

What does “SM” stand for in the context of Leonardo da Vinci? The obvious answer is the $450 million painting of the frontal Salvator blessing with one hand while the other cradles a rock-crystal sphere of the mundus (actually the cosmos rather than the customary globe). In reality, as happens with Leonardo’s productions, our visual engagement with the painting has been skewed by fictionalised stories, lurid journalism, and attributional vitriol. For me, SM now stands for “Sensationalised Mess.” How the painting actually works as a devotional image, what it means, and how it embodies Leonardo’s science and art have become lost.

It is beginning to be appropriated in the public mind alongside the Mona Lisa. It is remarkable how far in the few years since its sale it has caught up on that most iconic of portraits. Humorous and pious rip-offs appear in increasing numbers, bearing witness to the power of the image. There is a lot of merchandise. We find it featuring impressively on an Anatolian rug, and for those with deeper pockets a micro-mosaic version is available for €180,000!

Of the filmed and TV productions, pride of place goes to Andreas Koefoed’s stylish The Lost Leonardo. It begins and continues with cleverly staged shots, not least of mysterious interiors, often damp and penumbral, featuring grotesque figures from the art world, self-caricatured even beyond Daumier’s imagination. The star ego is that of Jerry Saltz, who declares triumphantly that all the known Leonardo’s are “heavily documented.” This is spectacularly untrue. We only need think of the Munich Madonna, which came into the Museum off the streets and was initially thought be by Verrocchio. Later in the film, Saltz brandishes a stiff rod to beat a reproduction of the Salvator in an act of ugly theatre, shouting that it is a “marked-up piece of junk.” I was astonished to discover he is a prize-winning critic.

Andreas’s film is populated by clusters of monster egos, a good number of whom attribute the present appearance of the picture to Dianne Modestini, the conservator who diplomatically ensured that areas of paint loss did not destroy the effect of the picture. “Most of the painting is re-made”—or variations of this claim—emerge repeatedly through ignorant mouths. In reality it is less “re-made” than the Last Supper.

Not the least bizarre figure is that of Yves Bouvier, maestro of free-ports (taxation-free havens for “investments”), whose self-confessed bending of the truth when he sold the painting to Dmitri Ryboloflev with a $ 47.5 million markup, is matched by his skills on a monocycle.

It is news when a loud-mouth can claim that the world’s most expensive picture is not by the master. It is news when it is seemingly in the luxury liner of a mega-rich Arab. It is not news when Leonardo’s authorship is recognised with rational arguments. Not much prominence was given to the scientific examinations conducted for the Louvre in advance of the great exhibition in Paris. This evidence is presented in an impressive book printed for the Louvre but not officially released when the museum failed to borrow the Salvator. I have a PDF of this rarest book, in which the director, Jean-Luc Martinez, declares unequivocally that the Salvator Mundi, from the former Cook collection and now owned by the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was studied by the museum and C2RMF in 2018. The results of the historical and scientific study presented in this book fully confirm the attribution of the work to Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo’s picture continues to stray beyond the media devoted to the arts. Not the least of the stories is the continuing court case that pits Rybolovlev against Bouvier. The dealer-cum-free-porter, Bouvier, seems to thinks that all is fair in love and the art jungle. His Russian customer believes he has been taken for an illegal ride.

Perhaps the most important question is the current whereabouts of the painting. The statement by Martinez seems to be true, and it is likely that the masterpiece will be housed in a Saudi museum within the next two years.

My overwhelming feeling is “poor picture.” It deserves better.

Discover more about Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in this three-part blog series.

_{Featured image: The Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci}

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From navigation to architecture: how the brain interprets spaces and designs places

How do our brains help us learn about the spatial relationships in our world and then use them to find our way from one place to another? And how might answering this question offer new insights into how architects design?

One possible answer to the first question came from the Nobel-prize winning discovery by John O’Keefe and his colleagues that linked navigation to the hippocampus of the rat brain. O’Keefe discovered neurons whose firing encoded where, in its small world, the animal found itself. More specifically, if the animal moved around a small box or simple maze, there were neurons—he called them place cells—that fired only when the animal was in a small region that he called the place field of the place cell.

But pause a moment. The word “place” can mean somewhat different things. In response to the question “Where did you meet Luigi?”, the natural answer would be, perhaps, “On the Belvedere of the Villa Cimbrone.” But place could also require detail like “30 meters from the left end of the Belvedere and 50 centimeters back from the balustrade.” So, going forward, let’s distinguish a significant or memorable place from a metrically defined place, and reserve the word place for the first usage and location for the second.

Cognitive mapping and navigation

Note that “knowing where you are” is very different from “being able to navigate.” A billboard on which there is an “x” with the legend “you are here” and is otherwise blank, is not a map. A map must encode all the places that matter to us and the paths we need to find a route from where we are to where we want to be, even if we have never before travelled between these two places. If the map is “in our head” we call it a cognitive map. The alternative to figuring out a path is simply to follow a route—whether a habitual route or one specified by a friend or smartphone.

In 1975-6, Israel Lieblich and I developed a computational account of how rats could find satisfactory paths through mazes depending on whether they were hungry, thirsty, or fearful. We modeled a cognitive map as a structure with nodes to represent significant places and with edges for the direct paths between them. We called this structure a World Graph (WG), but there are many such graphs at very different scales—whether encoding the places where food, water, or fearful stimuli can be found in a rat’s maze; the stations and connecting lines in a subway map; or the route maps of airlines that are indeed maps of the world—that differ in what constitutes a significant place when employing the map. Thus, we may have multiple WGs for the same territory.

Cognitive mapping and architectural design

Just as a cognitive map is different from a set of fixed paths, so the cognitive scientist’s sense of script is very different from the script of a play, where who says what and when is prescribed in advance. Consider the “birthday party” script: the guests must bring presents, someone must prepare a cake with candles, and the candles must be lit before the birthday-honoree blows them out, etcetera. But whether the presents are opened before or after the cake ceremony, and what other activities are part of the party is not prespecified. Let’s just add that, when a party is held, the activities specified in the script require places in which they occur. 

The implication for architecture is that a building is designed to serve multiple purposes and the architect must envisage how the building will support inhabitants in their performance of relevant scripts. The significant places for a building (or a city) are not only those where one can perform one’s own versions of the practical scripts that the architect has considered, but also those where one can appreciate a particular view, whether from the outside or within. Moreover, a building may succeed not only by satisfying the planned scripts—consider the highly scripted activities that distinguish schools, hospitals, and churches—but also by providing opportunities for users to explore. 

This positive sense of exploration is what we might call waylosing:

I am not advocating waylosing on the way to the maternity ward, but in less stressed situations it can be great fun. Waylosing is …  one of the great attractions of Venice … finding something unexpected and useful when looking for something else. (Per Mollerup, 21 April 2014.)

I thought I had coined the word waylosing before I found this citation and had indeed applied it to the absolute delight of exploring Venice in a random way, far from the madding crowd in Piazza San Marco.

From scripts to cognitive maps to architecture

All this led to a new perspective on architectural design, incorporating insights from brain imaging, neuropsychology, and computational modeling.

One challenge was to show how fragments of the architect’s memories can morph and combine in the design of forms that will afford new experiences to the future user. This required examining available studies of the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory (recalling past episodes, rather than contributing to a cognitive map) and how it also forms part of larger systems engaged in imagination. When we perform a script within a building, we are developing and exploiting cognitive maps to proceed from place to place within the satisfaction of that script, rather than simply seeking a path from start point to goal. In my book When Brains Meet Buildings, I thus analyzed what it means for the designer, imagining the experiences and behaviors of users of the forthcoming building, to in some sense “invert” the process whereby each user will form their own cognitive maps (note the plural) for the satisfaction of a range of scripts, and as the basis for forming new scripts for their own exploration and enjoyment of the building.

In sketching ideas for a building, the architect will develop ideas of the form, function, and feeling of the various spaces within and around it. The present discussion focuses on how ideas for different places envisaged to serve practical and aesthetic functions help define the places that will actually be constructed in and around the building. Ideas for these notional places must develop during the design process. These places may satisfy goals within diverse scripts—a focus on the feel of the kitchen might yield a script that demands a place for admiring the view of a garden, another for the meal-preparation script will demand a place to put the oven. At early stages of design, there will be multiple scripts, with each script having its own set of places that define the nodes of what we might call a script-WG. These specifications of the roles of inter-related places complement the architect’s sketches of the form of the building’s spaces, with limited specification of where and how the nodes will be linked to locations in the 3D Euclidean space defined around the site where the building will be constructed. Edges in a preliminary script-WG will simply mark transitions that will occur from one place to another in executing the corresponding script. 

All this leads to study of melding diverse scripts as a crucial process: a design that specifies separate places for each node of each script may be both uneconomical and inconvenient. For example, the scripts for food preparation and dishwashing in a home would normally involve using the same sink, whereas in a restaurant they might not. As design proceeds towards construction drawings, the various nodes must become anchored in that Euclidean space. This can include decisions to map certain nodes in distinct script-WGs to the same location, and this entails that the two script-WGs become merged into one as shared nodes inherit their properties and the edges of their progenitors. This in turn requires assessing whether features of one script do or do not block features of the other script as the new WG is refined to accommodate both scripts. The process of working this out may reflect back to modify the “what connects to what” of design at the WG level but also the aesthetics of form that marks the architect’s individual signature in shaping the building.

The implications of this work are to push understanding of architecture beyond the views offered by glossy photographs in magazines and on websites to engage with a deeper understanding of how people act and interact in the spaces that architects provide. This has implications for linking neuroscience (broadly conceived to include cognitive science and biology more generally) to a deeper understanding of human well-being. It also offers invitations to scientists to extend their studies from the laboratory to the built environment as the basis for fruitful conversations between architecture and neuroscience. To paraphrase John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “Ask not only what neuroscience can do for architecture, but also what architecture can do for neuroscience.”

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Dance “crazes” and plagues: a precedented phenomenon

Lockdown raves, dodging people in the street, no more hugs, then hugs, then no more hugs, then hugs; confinement within the home worthy of house arrest—and the language of self-isolation, shelter, safety… all the makings of a sci-fi horror film depicting the world at an end. Or a history book, which is what this pandemic has felt like to me at times, having spent well over a decade thinking about historical epidemiology, specifically in relation to ideas about dance.

What came in the nineteenth century to be known as the “Black Death,” or bubonic plague, decimated somewhere between a third and half of the population of most towns and villages, cities and countrysides in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. It returned in bouts for centuries afterwards. At the same time, people, it seemed, were dancing; this gaiety in turn drew the attention of moralists who thought no one should be doing anything of the sort. Sometimes, these dancing people were travelling pilgrims, as I realised, digging through the archives of this medieval lore. Sometimes, they were hippie-like characters who wore wreaths in their hair and hung out in makeshift campsites outside town. By the time these stories came through to nineteenth-century colonial eyes, this started to look like what was being observed of rebellions—often dancing, sometimes no—all over the colonial world. In Madagascar, people were “possessed” by the dead queen, Ranavalona I, who was being called upon to help depose her puppet son; this too was described in medical literature as a dancing “plague” or epidemic. And yet as I realised, looking into this further, this actually constituted a perfectly legitimated form of governmental riposte. And the examples proliferate.

What today’s choreographies of gathering and distanciation show is that far from being “unprecedented,” today’s times, as it were, have a long history of precedent in ways of moving and ways moving bodies have been imagined or understood. Disorderly bodies—those that appear not to adhere to rules of good conduct—tend to be likened to the diseased, the contagious; tend to be seen as “contagious” themselves. At the same time, as we know well now after two years of pandemic life, quarantine has long been a proven measure of bringing infections down. During times of severe contagion that risk compromising the most vulnerable people’s health and lives, and in effect make everyone far more vulnerable than would be the case in more “normal” times, we shift our choreographies, shift our ways of understanding what is a convivial way of moving or what is right; shift also ways we see the present moment.

What I like to think of as the feeling of historicity describes this feeling of finding something uncanny, or comfortable, in the sense that the experiences of the present will be gotten through… that something not unlike this has been lived through before. Or, and these are not mutually exclusive, that something might radically change—a hope many have nurtured, especially in the early days of the current pandemic, in thinking that perhaps relationships to work, to family, or to climate, will finally transform. The feeling of historicity—perhaps the converse to the sense of these times being “unprecedented”—allows for a measure of proximity to other people, places, and times. “Crisis” becomes relativized.

Of course, the crisis is also very real, and felt presently, no matter how “precedented” it may be in some ways. A lot of what takes place is release from pent-up tension and strain: dance “crazes” sweeping TikTok or Instagram play—unwittingly, perhaps—on a very old trope, the expression of convivial energetic release and even “madness” of a sort, that comes with being cooped up for too long. In a great “case” of so-called “dance madness” or epidemic contagion I read about in the eighteenth-century Shetland Islands, some people were more or less climbing the walls with “cabin fever”; other “cases” in the Middle Ages involve girls and boys bored in church being told to go outside and dance forever, to their deaths. Many stories came of this sort of lore: familiar today includes Hans Christian Andersen’s moralizing version in his story of the “red shoes”—too much fixation on worldly things will drive one mad. The Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell film remake of The Red Shoes in 1948 featured a young woman (Vicky Page, played by Moira Shearer) who was so obsessed with dancing she eventually drove herself to insanity and ultimately death. Many different moralizing perspectives can be drawn from this, including, as I see it, a relationship to over-commitment or overzealousness with work, to institutional pressure (her dancing master is a slave-driver of a sort, and she is driven by her own passion, but also spurred on by this culture of “better, more” to the point that it harms).

With crowd gatherings mimicking madness, or with the many remakes of “mad” dance scenes filmed at home or in studios during lockdown, the desire for embodying “madness” seems never to have been so strong. What these moments teach us, and what I was able to explore in my book well before the current pandemic hit, was how the figure of dancing epidemics, or contagious dance, or dance madness are nothing if not enduring, and often accompany xenophobic or sexist prejudice associated with bodies apparently in disarray. Just as true is the fact that “madness” as such is at best a very volatile affair, often composed of a highly serious wish to let loose and “go a bit crazy,” together with a sense one has genuinely a bit of a screw loose. To dance quite literally allows for stomping out some of the tension, laughing, bonding with those around one, and opening up the chest or neck, among other basic physical or physiological things. Nothing is very “mad” about that, though to talk of this as madness or as a craze translates depreciatively in hindsight—only if we take this dancing too literally as an expression of entire populations or groups being “sick.” On the contrary, it is wellness they’re seeking and expressing, and this wellness is of course, when the world has gone a bit bonkers—when it has become unrecognisable, one has lost one’s coordinates, one is confused and unmoored—comprised of a solid portion of humour, joy, and sheer reprieve.

This does not for a moment downplay the seriousness of actually contagious illness; doctors dancing for their patients in covid wards, in videos that have themselves gone viral, know this well. The two go hand in hand: when tensions rise, so does the need to assuage them. The challenge today is to do this nevertheless safely—to legalise gatherings so safety measures can be put into place, for example, as municipal authorities did in Strasbourg in the early 16^th century, in an “episode” of dancing that has been grossly sensationalized, rather than to drive gatherings far underground. Across from my flat in London, enormous crowds gathered while clubs were closed. This was outdoors, in park space. Not an ideal measure given spread takes place even in open air; but the energy gathered kept some people going for a while. As I discovered writing my book, there is, as I’ve also noted here, nothing “manic” or “contagious” about this; but there is a long history of judgment, demonization in some cases, and medicalization from the sidelines—the sense that these young people should shut up and keep still (that their dancing itself was a plague). These are survival mechanisms of a sort, on a global level as well as on a local one. Survival comes in many forms, most of them, in the case of pandemic conditions, involving distance and masking, sanitation and further precautions; at the same time, if what we’re looking at is the history of underground culture and of rebellion, it is important, I think, to realise is that the need to dance, or the feeling of needing to join together with others in a release of energy which produces more energy in turn, has come at times with criminalization. For Native American Ghost Dancers in the 1890s, dancing in the face of genocidal conditions brought a sense of gathering and so collective force, even though crops and land were decimated through governmental treaty abuse. The dancing becomes a cipher for other tensions and culture wars, for other forces of judgment about who is allowed to move, why, when, and where.

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Reconstructing Claudius’ arch in Rome

In 41 CE, Roman emperor Claudius’ position in Rome was weak. He needed a military victory to assert his authority after predecessor Caligula’s assassination. No Roman leader had conquered Britain—the fabulous land set in the endless waters of “Ocean.” Julius Caesar was the first to cross Ocean to invade Britain in 55 and 54 BCE but had not been able to conquer the island, instead establishing an annual tribute to be paid to Rome. Claudius chose Britain as the venue for his ambitions of conquest.

Why did the island of Britain hold such an appeal to the Roman imagination? In Greek mythology, as inherited by the Roman elite, Ocean was endless and surrounded the inhabited world. Oceanus, the Greek god of the sea was one of the Titans and, as the Romans gained experience of the Atlantic Ocean, the domain of this ancestral god was pushed further to the north. Britain, as a vast island set within Ocean, had a special and unworldly identity that reflected the lack of knowledge of its peoples and lands. This gave the invasion of Britain a particular status for Roman generals and emperors looking to increase their power—hence the invasion of Britain. Therefore “Ocean” is capitalized here, to indicate its personification in the Greek and Roman tradition.

Claudius invaded Britain in 43 CE, exploiting the political instability following the recent death of the most dominant king of southern Britain, Cunobelin (Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”), to achieve a famous victory. The initial phases of the conquest of southern Britain progressed speedily under the leadership of the general Aulus Plautius, who won several battles before many of the Britons surrendered. Plautius then summoned Claudius to travel from Rome to Camulodunum (Colchester)—the most important political centre (oppidum) in Britain prior to the Roman invasion—after these initial victories. Other information from a classical writer indicates that Claudius spent only 16 days in Britain, and probably spent most of his time travelling to Camulodunum from Kent and back again. At Camulodunum, Claudius received the submission of the “kings” of around 11 peoples. After the initial weeks of the invasion, much of southern Britain appears to have surrendered without serious fighting within a few months. The propaganda of Claudius played up the degree of fighting in what was a fairly swift campaign of conquest. 

The triumphal arch

The Roman senate awarded Claudius with the honorary title “Britannicus” and granted him a triumph in Rome. An annual festival was proclaimed, indicating the importance attached to the conquest of south-eastern Britain in 43 CE, and the senate decreed the construction of a triumphal arch in Rome to celebrate Claudius’s victory. 

The arch was a material expression of the importance of the conquest of Britain to the senatorial elite in Rome. It was built into the Aqua Virgo aqueduct over the road leading north out of the city, the Via Lata, as part of a rebuilding programme. There are a number of triumphal arches in the city of Rome, including the famous examples of Titus and Constantine, which still exist. Only fragments of Claudius’ arch survive, but we have some antiquarian drawings of lost fragments and image on Roman coins. 

The arch bore an inscription, which only survives in part, which provides very important information of the conquest that is not recorded in the available classical accounts of Tacitus and Dio. The surviving inscription tells us that Claudius had received the surrender of a number of kings of the Britons, conquered without loss, and was the first to bring the barbarian peoples across the Ocean under the authority of Rome. Unfortunately, the number of kings that submitted is uncertain due to the fragmentation of the inscription but is usually interpreted as 11. 

It also helps provide the date of the arch. It appears to have taken several years for the arch to be constructed and there may have been an earlier arch constructed a few years after 43 CE, which might then have been modified in 51–2. By the time the arch was completed, Rome had come into conflict with the people named the Silures and Ordovices in western Britain. These battles resulted in a Roman victory in central Wales where the leader of the resistance, Caratacus, a son of Cunobelin, was captured and the Britons defeated. Caratacus and his family were paraded in Rome in 52 and this may be when the arch was finally completed (or reconstructed).

The significance of water in the design of the arch

The inscription on the arch refers to the control that Claudius had established over people beyond Ocean and the arch itself had a fascinating relationship to water. 

Oceanus, the Greek god of the Ocean, was the father of water in all its forms, including rivers, springs, wells and rainfall. This meant that the divinities who were felt to inhabit them were seen as children of Ocean. The Aqua Virgo, one of the 11 aqueducts supplying Rome, carried water into the city by a channel that ran over the top of Claudius’ arch. Numerous works in Rome and Italy during Claudius’ reign built upon the idea that he was master of water in all its forms. Other celebrations across the empire also commentated the emperor’s role, including the marble relief from Aphrodisias in Turkey showing Claudius receiving the submission of the land and sea in the form of two divinities.

The original design concept of this triumphal arch was fundamentally concerned with the control of flowing water by being constructed into the Aqua Virgo aqueduct. It complemented the arch of Drusus, the father of Claudius, which celebrated his triumph over Germania, constructed over the road south from Rome, the Via Appia. Travellers arriving and leaving the city by these routes would be affected by the powerful impact of these magnificent gateways.

It seems probable that the decoration of Claudius’ arch included scenes derived from the idea of conquering “Ocean,” including sea monsters and ships. No fragments depicting these beings are known to have survived, while the most impressive battle scene thought to be derived from arch was recorded in a sixteenth-century drawing showing Roman soldiers fighting Britons. 

Though it no longer survives, there is enough information about the monument to undertake a colour reconstruction.

The reconstruction

The reconstruction image is intended to convey the impact of Claudius’ British conquest at his powerbase in Rome. Although the exact original appearance of the arch is unknown, the reconstruction brings together the information from different types of material records and remains and draws upon the symbolic significance of water to Claudius’ conquest. 

Building the reconstruction for Conquering the Ocean was greatly assisted by information in Anthony Barrett’s article in the archaeological journal, Britannia, which considered the composition of the general design of the arch and the evidence for its imagery and materials in some detail. Barrett reviews the surviving sculpted fragments that have been attributed to the arch, and others that have only been recorded in drawings made during the sixteenth century. Following the first recorded excavations on the site of the arch in 1562, the Neapolitan architect and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio recorded that the arch lay in a heap of marble fragments. He reconstructed an elevation of the arch, built into the aqueduct, noting the locations of some sculpted details. After this, all traces of the arch were removed but parts of the Aqua Virgo aqueduct survive.

The starting point for reconstructing the arch was planning the scale of the edifice. This was generally informed by surviving examples, such as the triumphal arch at Orange in France, and in more detail by the dimensions of the main inscription slab that was originally displayed over the gateway; this measured around six metres long and stood around three metres high. 

As all classical sculpture was at least partly coloured, either by painting or through the use of particular media, it was essential to reconstruct the arch in colour to convey the dramatic visual impact of the original design. The use of yellows and reds was informed by the fragments of the fluted marble columns referred to by the antiquarian Giacinto Gigli in the seventeenth century. These were carved from a deep yellow marble veined with red that may have been sourced from North Africa, fragments of which were found near the site of the arch in 1923. A blue-based green was also used for contrast, similar to the reconstruction of a column capital in green, red and yellow on display at the Harbour Museum at Xanten in Germany.

Bringing all this information together while filling the conceptual gaps—to build an entire architectural design with a dramatic appearance appropriate to the subject—was an engaging challenge. Every image reflects our stances (intentional or unintentional) and current agendae. If we know this, we can articulate these things in our image-making, to critique and question, as well as try out new “ways of seeing” things.

Although the arch does not survive, the conquest of southern Britain was the greatest achievement of Claudius’ successful reign. Because of the way that the Roman conquest of Britain played on the island’s status as an Oceanic realm, we felt it was important to reconstruct the arch in colour to communicate its significance. Much of the information for the conquest of Roman Britain is highly fragmentary and derives from a combination of classical texts and archaeological information. The reconstruction of the arch helps exemplify the challenges involved in piecing together the story of Roman conquest of Britain from Julius Caesar to Hadrian.

_{Feature image by Scailyna – own work, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0}

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The appearance of the goddess Discord: Gustave Moreau and a mythical tradition

A vivid demonstration of how Greek myths may appear today in unexpected ways was displayed in the Gustave Moreau exhibition at Waddesdon Manor, which took place between June and October 2021. The exhibition presented a series of Moreau’s watercolours, commissioned by Anthony Roux in 1879, illustrating the Fables of La Fontaine. 

One of the fables (Book VI, Fable XX) describes Discord, the Greek goddess Eris, beginning with her ejection from Olympus for causing dispute among the gods with an apple. Embraced by humanity with open arms, she magnifies every small dispute, fanning each tiny spark into a conflagration. However, she has no fixed abode where she can be located in case she is needed, so she is assigned as her residence the house of Hymen (god of marriage).

Although most of La Fontaine’s stories are inspired by Aesop, this one has no origin in the Greek fabulist, but goes back to Homer, Hesiod, and Vergil. In Theogony Hesiod makes Eris the daughter of Night, and in Works and Days he famously describes two Erides: “One would be commended when perceived, the other is reprehensible […] The one promotes ugly fighting and conflict […] (The other) is good for mortals.” However, the main presence of Eris in Greek mythology is in the context of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, which culminated, after the Judgement of Paris, in the Trojan War. Thus, a connection with the wedding is already evident, but La Fontaine turns it into something amusing, involving human quarrels between married couples. 

What did Gustave Moreau make of this story? Usually considered as the first French Symbolist painter, Moreau rejected the dominant artistic trends of his time in order to explore his own anxieties and longings by returning to the Greek myths. He had a solid education in the Classical world but followed an idiosyncratic path through the mythological tradition. 

Claude Philips, as quoted in the Waddesdon Manor exhibition catalogue, describes Moreau’s Discord like this:

“A beautiful, snaked-crowned Fury, half lies, half reclines, in deceitful repose on the steps of a richly ornamented temple, her pallid form being set off with draperies of heavy poisonous green and fluid red, which add strong force and pathos to the design.”

Moreau follows La Fontaine in locating Discord at the temple of Hymen, under the statue of the god, and represents her as a beautiful woman who reclines with her eyes closed. She is partially naked, but her red cape, ornate micro-skirt, and the adornment on her legs and feet, suggest “oriental” glamour. Moreau repeatedly associates repose with female beauty and its contemplation, as in his renditions of Galatea, Delilah, Semele, and others; in his numerous paintings of Galatea, for instance, he usually represents her reclining, naked and enticing, exposed to her viewer Polyphemus. In the case of Discord, the snakes on her hair visually associate her with Medusa and also with the Furies. However, nothing in Moreau’s image of Discord evokes that degree of menace, and she even has something of innocence in her placid expression, perhaps reflecting a melancholic longing for her former life among the gods. The only hint of disharmony comes from the two Erotes flying away—perhaps frightened at the sight of her—and a third Eros lying dead on the floor, his torch beside him, as if the presence of Discord had resulted in the annihilation of Love. Paradoxically, in the distance Moreau has included a pair of lovers, seemingly unaware of the proximity of Discord.

Moreau’s Discord shares many features with one of the dominant themes of his art: the beautiful, passive, and distant woman, exposed to male view, a motif which he shares with the Pre-Raphaelites. Moreau has often been compared to Edward Burne-Jones, the painter associated with the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism, who saw Moreau’s watercolours of the fables when they were exhibited in Paris in 1886. Burne-Jones also represented Discord in his painting The Feast of Peleus as well as in the lower part of the Troy Triptych. But in these images, she is depicted as a sinister character with dark purple tunic and brown wings, while the gods look at her in fear. In spite of his connections with Burne-Jones, Moreau’s representation of Discord does not coincide with his, as the two artists have chosen different mythological moments and depict the goddess in completely different attitudes. Another striking contrast with Moreau’s peaceful image of the goddess can be seen in J.J. Grandville’s illustration of the same fable by La Fontaine, which shows an ugly and furious Discord next to a violently arguing matrimonial couple. 

Moreau’s Discord departs from these and other, more traditional depictions: his image is more Moreau than Discord. It seems that only the defeated Eros reflects the destructive character of Discord and her impact on love and marriage. 

^{Feature image: Altes Museum, via Wikimedia Commons}

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Molise: the undiscovered Italian region

When planning a trip to Italy, the major cities of Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice are usually on the must-see list. Yet many people also yearn to find the “undiscovered hidden gem” waiting to be explored. For the latter group, Molise is waiting. This region is so underrated that Italians have a running joke: “Il Molise non esiste” (“Molise doesn’t exist”). But the joke is really on those who haven’t visited this idyllic region. Like many of the better-known regions of Italy, Molise has great culinary delicacies, beautiful towns, and a rich history. Visitors will also find plenty of opportunities to try out their Italian, since English isn’t as widely spoken in this area as in some of the more touristic zones.

Molise is divided into two provinces, each with its own capital. Isernia is the capital of the western province that flanks the Apennine Mountains, and Campobasso is the capital of the eastern province that touches the Adriatic Sea. Many of the major cities have roots that date back to the Roman period, while other towns emerged in the Middle Ages. In the south, the Roman ruins of ancient Saepinum are visible near modern Altilia. This archaeological site contains all the essential elements of a traditional Roman city and is much less crowded (and less expensive) than the more famous Pompeii.

In Roman times, Molise was the home to the notorious Samnites, a people famously portrayed by the Romans as rustic and aggressive. The famous sanctuary of Pietrabbondante in the north is considered the most important cult site of the Samnite state. The view from the surviving theater looking out over the countryside is spectacular. Further east, the architecture of the seaside town of Termoli reflects its Lombard and Norman periods. The Romanesque cathedral and Norman castle are especially beautiful.

Molise’s history is also on display in various museums throughout the region. Some of the earliest evidence of habitation there can be found in the Paleolithic Museum of Isernia. The museum is built on one of the most important Prehistoric archaeological sites in the Mediterranean world. Visitors walk along a path suspended above researchers who continue to excavate and study the site. The multimedia displays and reproductions of Paleolithic and Neolithic huts and a life-sized Elephas antiquus are worth a visit. Further east, the town of Larino sits atop the ancient site of Larinum, made famous by the Roman orator Cicero for his defense of a citizen from the town. The amphitheater and the Civic Museum provide a taste of its rich past.

Part of the living history of Molise includes its numerous festivals. On the day of the Corpus Domini the annual Procession of the Mysteries takes place in Campobasso. This parade, accompanied by a live band, consists of wooden religious images with iron supports that are carried on the shoulders of the townspeople. Children from Campobasso suspended in the iron supports portray religious figures in scenes from the Old and New Testaments. The structures, the majority of which were originally made around 1740, weigh up to 605 kilograms. A museum dedicated to the festival can be found there. Another unique festival takes place on 25, 26, and 27 May in Larino. This celebration is dedicated to Saint Pardo, one of the patron saints of the town. It involves a parade of over 100 carts, each decorated with hand-made paper flowers and drawn by a pair of oxen. Feasting and music add to the festive atmosphere.

Molise also offers great cuisine. Like many regions of Italy, Molise is especially proud of its olive oil that serves as a primary ingredient in most recipes. Its best-known wine is the Tintilia, a strong but balanced red that goes well with meat sauces and grilled meat dishes. Molise makes a wide selection of cheeses, such as the pear-shaped caciocavallo and scamorza (eaten cold or grilled), the pecorino (sheep milk cheese) from Capracotta, and the soft and creamy stracciata. Molise also takes pride in its cured meats. These include the ventricina (pork seasoned with salt, wild fennel and pepper, and dried near a fireplace before being cured), and the liver sausage from Rionero Sannitico (made with pig liver, heart and lungs combined with salt, pepper, garlic, orange peel, and laurel, all dried next to a fireplace for 4-5 days before curing). Another hidden surprise that Molise offers are the truffles (both black and white) found in the center of the region. These delicacies are used to flavor all kinds of dishes—even desserts!

For the more adventurous tourist looking to experience a side of Italy that can’t be found in the big cities, Molise offers a wealth of options. The people are immensely friendly and the experience is sure to be a memorable one!

Feature image by Lorenzo Lamonica from Unsplash

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SHAPE and societal recovery from crises

The SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) initiative advocates for the value of the social sciences, humanities, and arts subject areas in helping us to understand the world in which we live and find solutions to global issues. As societies around the world respond to the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, research from SHAPE disciplines has the potential to illuminate how societies process and recover from various social crises.

In recognition of the essential role these disciplines play for societal recovery, we have curated a hub of SHAPE research which looks back on how we have rebuilt from social crises in the past, how societies process living through extraordinary times, and considers the next steps societies can take on the road to recovery.

Lessons from the past

Throughout history, individuals and societies have encountered periods of crisis caused by factors including war, natural disasters, and health pandemics. Responses to these crises can provide a vital insight into how we respond to future global threats.

In a review of how societies respond to peril, Robert Wuthnow suggests that, “nothing, it appears, evokes discussion of moral responsibility quite as clearly as the prospect of impending doom.” Wuthnow examines how societies have responded to four major threats: nuclear holocaust, weapons of mass destruction, concern about a global pandemic, and the threat of global climate change, and finds that, “the picture of humanity that emerges in this literature is one of can-do problem solvers. Doing something, almost anything, affirms our humanity.”

Looking further back, the US Civil War also had a profound impact on many people and touched women’s lives in contradictory ways. Hannah Rosen’s chapter “Women, the Civil War, and Reconstruction” examines the wartime and postwar experiences primarily of black and white but also Native American women and provides insights into how we can reconstruct a fairer society following conflicts. Meanwhile, in Total War: An Emotional History, Claire Langhamer examines the role emotions played in the immediate aftermath of WWII, approaching our relationship to feeling through the lens of social, as well as cultural, history.

How we choose to commemorate the past is also a key question, explored by Joshua Gamson in an article published in Social Problems about the US National AIDS Memorial Grove.

Looking back on the economic implications of social crises, Mark Bailey discusses how the plague acted as a catalyst for the vast transformation of trading routes in North Sea economies. This economic shift has been reflected in the COVID-19 pandemic and, in response, authors from the Journal of Consumer Research have created a conceptual framework for understanding how consumers and markets have collectively responded over the short term and long term to threats that disrupt our routines, lives, and even the fabric of society.

Literature, classics, and the arts also provide an avenue to explore the effects of social crises. Laura E. Tanner’s blog post explores the works of author Marilynne Robinson. According to Tanner, these works provide us with tools for coping during lockdown by exploring the familiar, whilst her characters also navigate the threat of mortality and how trauma disrupts the comforts of the everyday.

In her chapter “Post-Ceasefire Antigones and Northern Ireland”, Isabelle Torrance traces the evocation of Antigone in the context of the Northern Irish conflict. In this way, literature provides a mirror to explore and process contemporary social crises.

Music history also provides a window into past responses to social traumas. In her chapter “Embodying Sonic Resonance as/after Trauma – Vibration, Music, and Medicine”, Jillian C. Rogers shows that interwar French musicians understood music making as a therapeutic, vibrational, bodily practice which offered antidotes to the unpredictable and harmful vibrations of warfare.

Living through extraordinary times

As the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects have spread across the globe, nations and individuals have adapted rapidly to dramatic shifts in how we experience the world.

Recent history can provide a fascinating insight into how communities have lived through extraordinary times in the past. In Pandemics, Publics, and Narrative, the authors explore how the general public experienced the 2009 swine flu pandemic by examining the stories of individuals, their reflections on news and expert advice given to them, and how they considered vaccination, social isolation, and other infection control measures.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, historians have considered how we will write the histories of 2020. In “Documenting COVID-19”, Kathleen Franz and Catherine Gudis explore people’s keen awareness of the “historic” moment in which we are living, and the questions it poses for historians: how do we ethically document our current social, public health, and economic crises, and in doing so help to dismantle structural inequalities?

In her article “Slow History”, published in The American Historical Review, Mary Lindemann asks whether the pandemic provides an opportunity to evaluate the “doing” of history and to isolate what really matters in research, writing, and instruction. Arguing that we should learn to value a slow, painstaking approach to our work, Lindemann argues that “historians are, after all, long-distance runners not sprinters.”

Among the many frontline workers enduring the COVID-19 pandemic are social workers, who continued to support people through a period of unprecedented change. A 2020 article from Social Work—“Voices from the Frontlines: Social Workers Confront the COVID-19 Pandemic”—explores how these key workers operated in the US, how they were coping with their own risks, and how social work as a profession anticipated the needs of vulnerable communities during the early stages of the US health crises. The pandemic has also presented specific challenges for social workers interacting with children; a paper from Children & Schools delves into nine ethical concerns facing school social workers when they must rely on electronic communication platforms.

A philosophical approach allows us to explore human emotions and ethics during major world threats. In their chapter on “Emotional resilience”, Ann Cooper Albright explores resilience in the face of threats—from natural disasters to school bullies—finding that emotional resilience provides the opportunity for lasting transformation: “often in returning and remembering, we find that we no longer want what we had before.“

The road to recovery

Living through these extraordinary times, the COVID-19 pandemic poses some important questions for the future. How do we rebuild from the economic, social, and emotional traumas of the past?

Charlotte Lyn Bright’s Social Work Research article considers the vital role social workers play in supporting society and individuals by looking at the unique skills they employ in their work during difficult times. Meanwhile, in her paper on “Community development in higher education”, Lesley Wood explores how academics can ensure their community-based research makes a difference by discussing the socio-structural inequalities that influence community participation.

In piece for the OUPblog, Nicole Hassoun calls for universal, legally enforced human rights access to essential medicines and healthcare, arguing that, “protecting human rights can help us increase our Global Health Impact.”

The study of the past provides a vital tool to help societies rebuild in the future. In “Making Progress: Disaster Narratives and the Art of Optimism in Modern America”, Kevin Rozario examines the role of disaster writings and “narrative imagination” in helping Americans to conceive of disasters as instruments of progress, arguing that this perspective has contributed greatly to the nation’s resilience in the face of natural disasters.

In this blog piece “Listen now before we choose to forget”, oral historian Mark Cave describes how memory is pliable; our recollections are continually reshaped by our own changing experiences and the influence of collective interpretations. In 2020, Cave writes, the Black Lives Matter protests, divisive partisan politics, and anger over extended lockdowns were all influencing our memories of the pandemic. Cave further explores an oral history project conducted among New Orleans residents following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which “filled a deep need within our community to reflect and make sense of the experience of the storm and its aftermath.” Cave’s research will be vital for future historians considering how to study and understand the COVID-19 pandemic “at a time when history is clearly ‘in the making’.”

Literature continues to provide our society with a tool to understand and process trauma. In her blog post “Why literature must be part of the language of recovery from crisis”, Carmen Bugan explores trauma and social recovery in poetry, and its pertinence during the COVID-19 crises.

Pandemic life has underscored how digital technology can foster intimate connections. Research from Nathan Rambukkana discusses how this influx of digital connection has fostered a mode of interaction know as “distant sociality,” and asks whether this is here to stay following life under lockdown.

Looking much further to the future, Pasi Heikkurinen discusses the end of the human-dominated geological epoch and the potential technological advances needed to make a non-human dominated planet sustainable. Heikkurinen’s chapter provides sustainability scholars and policymakers with an opportunity “to deliberate not only on the proper kind of technology or the amount of technology needed, but also to consider technology as a way to relate to the world, others, and oneself.”

The impact of COVID-19 on the global economy is profound, and yet economists must grapple with how this impact will shape the future. In their chapter “The Interactional Foundations of Economic Forecasting”, Werner Reichmann explores how economic forecasters produce legitimate and credible predictions of the economic future, despite most of the economy being transmutable and indeterminate. Meanwhile, in “Why we can be cautiously optimistic for the future of the retail industry”, Alan Treadgold explores the new retail landscape following the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there is unprecedented uncertainty for retail outlets, Treadgold argues “there are substantial opportunities for reinvention also.”

Music also has the power to enact social healing and transformation following crises. In their chapter “Unchained Melody: The Rise of Orality and Therapeutic Singing”, June Boyce-Tillman explores therapeutic approaches to singing, finding that “singing has the ability to strengthen people physically and emotionally,” which brings “individuals and communities together in order to provide healing at the deepest level.”

SHAPE research

SHAPE research is an essential component of all societies and will be critical for rebuilding from the global COVID-19 crisis. In “Humanities of transformation: From crisis and critique towards the emerging integrative humanities”, Sverker Sörlin evaluates the efforts to enhance and incentivize the humanities in the among Nordic countries in the last quarter century, finding a far richer and more complex image of quality in the humanities following structural education reform in 1990.

Meanwhile, Jack Spaapen and Gunnar Sivertsen assess the societal impact of SHAPE subjects, arguing that the social sciences and humanities have an obligation to assist the main challenges faced by people and governments.

As governments, universities, and research institutions consider where and how they focus their efforts as the world tentatively begins to explore the idea of recovery, the range of research that we’ve gathered here demonstrates that, while science and technology must play a crucial role, a recovery without SHAPE will be no recovery at all.

Featured image by Ryoji Iwata via Unsplash

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A Roman road trip: tips for travelling the Roman Empire this summer

As Europe reopens, consider a Roman road trip that takes inspiration from an ancient travel guide. The Vicarello itineraries describe what we might call the scenic route from Cádiz to Rome. Glimpses of the empire’s superlative architecture can be found along the way, and emerging digital tools can put primary sources at your fingertips.

Tools for traveling like a Roman

Use your preferred mapping tool to navigate the modern highway and let ORBIS plot a parallel journey along Roman roads. ORBIS, meaning “world” in Latin, is a geospatial model of the Roman transit system. Just enter your origin and destination and choose your season of travel. You can even compare modes of transit in terms of time and cost, in case you are wondering how your ancient counterpart would have fared by foot or by carriage. The trick to using ORBIS is knowing what Romans called the places you want to visit, and to that question Pleiades provides answers. Named for the mythical constellation, Pleiades is an online atlas of ancient Mediterranean places. Just type the ancient placename in a general search or the modern placename in an advanced search, and the resulting entry will tell you how the name has changed over time: the city we call Cádiz, for instance, the Romans called “Gades.” Pleiades entries also link related resources, such as Topostext, which will tell you what your favorite Roman author had to say about your destination.

Sites Romans visited, from Spain to Italy

With a dazzling seaside setting, Cádiz (Gades) is a delightful place to begin a journey. Founded by Phoenicians, the city was one of the oldest in the Roman realm. The site’s multi-cultural history can be traced in person at the Museo de Cádiz and from afar via Google Arts and Culture. Don’t miss the Phoenician gold, the statues of Roman emperors, or the ancient graffito of a lighthouse. Little from antiquity survives around town, aside from the impressive theater. This was one of the earliest in Roman Spain and had as its patron Lucius Cornelius Balbus the Elder, who rose to the office of consul during the Roman Republic. Follow his potential path to Rome and witness imperial transformations. Seville (Hispalis) has one of Spain’s largest archaeological museums. At Córdoba (Corduba), the theater is preserved in the archaeological museum’s basement, and tombs and a temple can still be seen in the cityscape. Further afield is Tarragona (Tarraco), with a circus and amphitheater overlooking the sea, and another of Spain’s fantastic museums.

On the other side of the Pyrenees, Nîmes (Nemausus) beckons. Recent cleaning campaigns have restored sparkle to the amphitheater and the influential temple known as the Maison Carrée. The surviving Roman gates called the Porte d’Auguste and the Porte de France highlight the boundaries of the ancient city within the modern one. The recently unveiled Musée de la Romanité has glass walls, an undulating design intended to resemble a toga, and great views of the amphitheater. Collection highlights include rare statues from the era of Gallic rule, as well as spectacular Roman paintings, mosaics, and sculptures salvaged during urban construction work. Just beyond Nîmes is the breathtaking aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard. Nearby sites also lie on the Vicarello route. Arles (Arelate) has an amphitheater, a theater, and an excellent museum. Glanum is a mini-Pompeii nestled in the Alpilles foothills.

Beyond the Alps, the Vicarello itineraries take you through Susa (Segusio), Turin (Augusta Taurinorum), and Bologna (Bononia), before reaching Rimini (Ariminum) on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Excellent signage here highlights the Roman remains, including a gateway, a fragmentary amphitheater, an elegant bridge commissioned by the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and an arch monument dedicated by the Senate and Roman People (SPQR) to Augustus for repairing the Via Flaminia. Beautiful mosaics can be seen at the recently excavated House of the Surgeon, while other striking finds from the city are displayed at the nearby museum.

Depart Rimini via the arch for Augustus, and let the Via Flaminia take you to Rome. Start at the Crypta Balbi, part of a theater complex constructed by Lucius Cornelius Balbus the Younger from Cádiz. Then walk to the nearby Pantheon, constructed by the emperors Trajan and Hadrian (both from Italica, a suburb of Seville). The Pantheon’s many adjacent cafés offer ideal settings for reminiscing. Did you prefer the design of the Pantheon or the Maison Carrée? Was the sea more beautiful at Cádiz or Rimini? With these sites in mind, conclude with a visit to the Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo, where the four silver cups engraved with the Vicarello itineraries are displayed in the basement. With gallery openings here and elsewhere still subject to pandemic protocols, be sure to inquire ahead. If you need to plan a return trip, remember that the Roman Empire is always best viewed from the road.

Feature image by Kimberly Cassibry

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Archaeology, architecture, and “Romanizing” Athens

The question of whether Athens was a Greek or Roman city seems straightforward, but among scholars there is some debate. While initially, and still geographically, a Greek city, the influence of the Roman Empire on Athens’ architecture, beginning in the first century BC with Pompey the Great, has led some scholars to classify it, architecturally, as a Roman provincial city. Pompey’s donation of fifty talents in 62BC was said to have financed a “bazaar” to display goods in the Piraeus (the harbor and center of economic activity) and perhaps the 12-meter tall Tower of the Winds (now restored), which was a horologion (timepiece) and, arguably, the world’s first meteorological station. Julius Caesar gave another fifty talents, which saw work begin on the Roman Agora, a project finished in the Augustan era thanks to yet another monetary donation, this time from Augustus himself.

This Roman Agora was nowhere near as extensive as the Athenian one, but its ruins show it was impressive, with a monumental gateway at its entrance (still standing today). Augustus went further though. He commissioned a temple of the goddess Roma and himself in front of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, with statues of himself (and perhaps other members of the imperial family) as well as the goddess Roma, and most likely housing the imperial cult. Later emperors followed suit. Claudius likely funded a marble stairway to the Propylaea of the Acropolis, and in Nero’s reign the theater of Dionysus was rebuilt.

It was not only rulers who built in Athens. Agrippa (Augustus’ son-in-law and righthand man) added a massive Odeum (theater), able to seat one thousand people, in the old Athenian Agora, which dwarfed all the other buildings around it. At some point in Trajan’s reign a certain Titus Flavius Pantaenus built what is often called a library in the Athenian Agora, though it was a grander monument than just a library as it included outer Stoas and a peristyle (an open-colonnade area).

But it was Hadrian who embarked on the most ambitious building program, which outdid that of Augustus and even Pericles in the fifth century or Lycurgus in the fourth. Hadrian had made Athens the cultural center of the Roman Empire by creating a league of Greek cities of the east with Athens at its center, called the Panhellenion. He wanted to beautify the city as befitted its new status. Thanks to him the massive temple of Olympian Zeus was completed (whose giant columns today rear to the sky); a temple of Hera and Zeus Panhellenius was built; as was a splendid library (with 100 columns) that also included gardens and colonnades; a gymnasium; and an aqueduct, to name but a few.

The archaeological remains of these buildings testify to their size and design and add to the notion that Athens had been turned into a provincial city. The new agora, for example, had some Greek architectural designs, but there was no mistaking Roman influence, such as the enclosed large marble-paved square with shops and halls on all four sides, and the later addition of a statue of Lucius Caesar atop its gate effectively turned it into a Roman triumphal arch. Agrippa’s Odeum also had Greek architectural elements to it (a Corinthian façade and capitals), but it was based on a smaller theater at Pompeii. And Hadrian’s library was probably modeled on the temple of Peace at Rome, with its library, art gallery, and garden. Reflective of these physical changes—and surely supporting the notion of the Romanizing of Athens—is the famous Arch of Hadrian, which the Athenians erected to him as a thanks offering in AD 132 (and still standing). It bore two inscriptions, one of which seems to speak volumes: “This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus” (the mythical founder of Athens).

There is no doubt Athens was physically changing. But that does not mean the city was being completely Romanized—the archaeological and architectural evidence is misleading and must be considered alongside the other anthropological knowledge available. Athens sprawled out quite a distance as it was the largest city in Greece, and it had monuments all over it—the vast majority stretching back to the classical era. Even the extensive building programs of Augustus and Hadrian did not suddenly transform the city skyline into a Roman one. The circular temple of the goddess Roma and Augustus on the Acropolis was only about eight meters in diameter and nine high, but, standing in front of the Parthenon as it did, it would have been dwarfed by that great temple to Athena. The sheer size of the Roman Odeum made its Roman presence impossible to miss, but it did not take up the entire Agora, nor did it put an end to people going there to do business, gather and talk about life and current affairs (as they had for centuries)—and appreciate all the Greek monuments there.

From the latter half of the first century BC increasing Roman involvement in Athens was evident in the numbers of Romans visiting, studying, and living there, and then the building activities. Rome impacted Athens for certain but did not cause the city to lose its “Greekness” and become a provincial one. The extent to which Roman architecture altered Athens has been exaggerated.

We should remember that the inscription “This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus” on Hadrian’s Arch faces the direction of the temple of Olympian Zeus and reflects the focal point of Hadrian’s Panhellenion, headed by Athens. But there was also another inscription on that arch, this one facing what had been, and would always be, the citadel and sacred center of the city the Acropolis; this inscription (only a few feet from its “pro-Roman counterpart”) proudly proclaimed it to all: “This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus.”

Featured image by Josiah Lewis via Pexels

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On SHAPE: a Q&A with Lucy Noakes, Eyal Poleg, Laura Wright & Mary Kelly

OUP have recently announced our support for the newly created SHAPE initiative—Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy. To further understand the crucial role these subjects play in our everyday lives, we have put three questions to four British Academy SHAPE authors and editors—social and cultural historian Lucy Noakes, historian of objects and faith Eyal Poleg, historical sociolinguist Laura Wright, and Lecturer in Contemporary Art History Mary Kelly—on what SHAPE means to them, and to their research.

SHAPE subjects are well-named—they help us shape the world we live in and the future we’re building. What distinctive potential and skills do you think Arts and Humanities and Social Science disciplines bring to the lives of those learning them, as well as to society?

Lucy Noakes: I think that these disciplines, though they vary widely in approaches and methods used, all have one essential element in common: they help our students to learn how to be effective, engaged, and critical citizens. For example, the pernicious nature of “fake news” today, from the wilder extremes of QANON fantasists to the advice circulating on social media suggesting that people can protect themselves from COVID-19 by inhaling steam or drinking hot water with lemon juice, can be harmful to both individuals and to wider societies. SHAPE students learn to be active and participatory readers and listeners. A student researching an essay topic will ask: who is arguing this? Why? What is their evidence? Where was it published? They also learn how to develop arguments based on evidence, not opinion—crucial skills in today’s world.

Eyal Poleg: Critical thinking and the ability to reflect on events, past and present, are vital for our existence as a dynamic and pluralistic society. Our students learn how to analyse sources, be they written accounts, artwork, mundane objects, or buildings. These skills are invaluable in becoming active and engaged citizens within modern society, especially in the face of empty rhetoric and fake news. Their ability to clearly communicate complex ideas is likewise instrumental in shaping the world we live in. History does not simply repeat itself, but, by learning about past societies, we gain a better understanding of the nature of our own, and of possible future directions.

Laura Wright: I’m a word-historian so I’ll give a specific answer with regard to my discipline: looking at how people used language in the past holds a mirror up to who we are now. For example, names Alice, Emma, Joan, John, Katherine, Margery, Peter, Richard, Robert, Thomas, William entered English via the Anglo-Norman language and knocked out the Old English namestock of Beowulf, Cyneheard, Ealdraed, Frithuswith, Ohthere. So, if you are called Alice or John you signal to the world at large that your parents were members of the Anglo-Norman family. But they might not have known it or thought of it that way: Alice or John might have just sounded suitable for a baby—traditional, not too outlandish. Society and its traditions shape us and the choices we make and studying SHAPE subjects causes us to question those assumptions—and in the case of historians, track them back to their source.

Mary Kelly: Students and scholars of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences open important questions about, for example, human difference and why people maintain certain belief systems over others. Students are encouraged to analyse, to be critical, to be diplomatic, to challenge when required, and to think creatively when locating solutions. The Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences exist in the service of human development, always enhancing our quality of life.

For example, in 2016, University College Cork became the first Irish-based university to formally integrate modern and contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa into its History of Art curricula. The teaching philosophy, which underpins the building of my courses, is to create an awareness among students about the current decentred world as well as our responsibility to equip students (potential future leaders) with robust cross-cultural competencies through innovative practices in teaching and learning. Our students are gaining valuable skills and insights which will galvanise them to engage with challenging conversations relating to human difference. Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences disciplines are actively enhancing human diplomacy.

As a SHAPE researcher, how are your concerns and needs different from your colleagues in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)?

Lucy Noakes: There is perhaps more in common between STEM and SHAPE subjects than we might first think. The key, and most important, similarity would be that we all work with evidence; it is just as important that a historian build their analysis based on the evidence available as an engineer or a biochemist, even though the outcomes might be very different. I would also argue that the overwhelming majority of academic research, across all subjects, is shaped by the historical context, concerns, needs, and values of the time and place in which we work. But perhaps the biggest difference is that in SHAPE we have more space for the development of arguments and perspectives—while 2 + 2 will always equal 4 in mathematics, historians’ analyses of a subject like the Second World War are endlessly varied and ever-changing. For me, this is a huge part of SHAPE’s appeal.

Eyal Poleg: STEM colleagues often pursue innovation, looking for ever more advance technologies, for ways of improving our quality of life and of understanding the natural world. SHAPE disciplines, on the other hand, tend to be more reflective, taking into account past accomplishments, and thinking more clearly about why and how should progress be made. This being said, I do not think of our work in opposition. Much of my recent research has been in collaboration with scientists, employing cutting-edge technologies in the analysis of historical objects. The two perspectives complement one another, with SHAPE defining the historical questions and STEM providing new means of answering them. At best, such collaboration contributes to both disciplines, unearthing hitherto unknown information about historical objects and learning about the past, on the one hand, while finding new uses for innovative technologies, on the other.

Laura Wright: What I need is historical text, and I suppose STEM researchers don’t—but in terms of research questions, we’re probably not very different. As a historical linguist I study creative literary texts as well as other kinds, but so do clinicians and scientists concerned with the brain, because people spend a lot of time talking about imaginary states—what might happen, what could happen, as well as what does happen. Whatever humans do ends up expressed in language, one way or another, and much of my source material consists of historic STEM text—people inventing things, in particular.  For example, the term pickled salmon was correlated with the London poor in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries as it was what they ate, sold from street barrows. Then the tin can was invented in 1813, pickled salmon was replaced, and the poor turned to tins, with the term tinned salmon having connotations of “working-class” for a century or so.

Mary Kelly: SHAPE and STEM address major societal challenges, however in very different ways. In addition, SHAPE researchers’ empirical and analytical needs, as well as divergent and convergent thinking processes, differ greatly to those applied in STEM.

In order for us to truly maximise the impact of STEM ideas and technologies, public and private sectors must engage with the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences in order to understand how human groups and individuals are formed and how they behave, produce, evolve, and co-exist.

Right now, however, the most urgent need for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is the need for fair and adequate financial resources for SHAPE research and development. SHAPE research is undervalued by many in the public and private sectors: this is clearly evident from the limited funding and support which the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences receive from numerous funding bodies and in the education system.

SHAPE subjects are hugely diverse, but they do share a focus on understanding more about people and societies, and what it is to be human. How does your research go about investigating these concepts? How do you see your work contributing to and informing these broader discussions?

Lucy Noakes: My most recent work has been on death and grief in Second World War Britain, and on the insights that approaches to the past that are attuned to the emotional lives of those we study can bring to our understanding of what it might be like to live through and navigate crises and changes that feel out of our control. I have been struck again and again this year by how much our experiences of fear, loss, and changes to our day to day lives have shaped my students and my own understandings of the lives of those who experienced total war. I also have a new awareness of the changes that the crisis of war helped to bring about in Britain, particularly the creation of the Welfare State at the war’s end. If only we listen, history has a lot to teach us about not only how societies manage crises, but about how we can use these moments of rupture to rethink our priorities, and how we want to live.

Find out more about Lucy’s recently published title, Total War, edited alongside Claire Langhamer and Claudia Siebrecht.

Eyal Poleg: My earlier work has explored how people engaged with the Bible in the Middle Ages, demonstrating a reliance on mediated access, surprisingly similar to knowledge of people and events of the Bible among secular societies nowadays. More recently I have studied hundreds of manuscripts and early printed Bibles to trace continuity and change across three and a half centuries, reevaluating the impact of print and Reformation on English religion. This perspective enabled me to unearth the long and complex process of innovation and change. Some features familiar to us, such as chapter division, took centuries to implement, very gradually moving from the nascent universities, through nunneries and chapels, to be embraced by lay women and men. The parish Bible, an early modern innovation, was first met with confusion and uncertainty. Understanding the limits of innovation, and putting things we take for granted in new perspective, helps us better understand our own society, past, present and future.

Find out more about Eyal’s recently published title, A Material History of the Bible, England 1200-1553.

Laura Wright: Well I research things we tend to take for granted, and one of these is house-names.  Humans need shelter. Humans give things names. Numbering houses is modern—18th century—but house-names are old. The ubiquitous house-name “Sunnyside” started as a medieval Scottish legal term in dividing up farm land, and then became an 18th-century English house-name particularly used by Quakers—ceasing to be a legal term and becoming a cultural marker, insider-code for “a Quaker lives here.” Certain Quakers and Nonconformists became extremely rich and their Sunnysides were mansions, and American author Washington Irving, visiting Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford in the Borders borrowed the name of a nearby farm called Sunnyside and named his highly-influential New York mansion Sunnyside too. There’s more to the story, but who influences who linguistically shows how culture spreads, and all humans are shaped by their culture. It’s good to be aware of one’s prejudices.

Find out more about Laura’s recently published title, Sunnyside.

Mary Kelly: My current research project looks beyond the purely European canon of historical Orientalist art objects to explore contemporary artistic responses from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). I argue that this approach will further contextualise art objects as being an important part of an ongoing, reciprocal socio-cultural dialogue between the global north and south. Specifically, I work in the space between 19th- and 20th-century European Orientalism and 21st-century responses to Orientalism from women artists located in various Middle Eastern and North African countries. Many historical and contemporary women artists from across the globe address the conflicting experiences of female identities and—through their art—they are “speaking back” to local, national and international marginalising views which present stereotypical ideas of oppressed or powerless women. I engage with Transnational Feminism in my work because it is rooted in the local and translocal experiences of women—after which women’s narratives cross “borders” in order to create meaningful conversations and collaborations internationally. My work evokes themes such as Orientalism, gender, female agency, female oppression, religion, heritage, diaspora, and difference all for the purpose of:

1. bringing art made by women to the fore.
2. the decolonisation of the History of Art.
3. using art to galvanise meaningful cross-cultural and transnational discourse about women in various societies.

Art builds progressive and positive bridges between different people.

Find out more about Mary’s recently published title, Under the Skin, edited alongside Ceren Özpınar.

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From fortified castle to wedding venue: Venetian examplars of adaptive reuse

What does one do with a castle? The Venetian Terraferma (and, indeed, all of Europe) is dotted with medieval castles that have long outlived the purposes for which they were intended. And yet, built of stone, they are costly to demolish and—more importantly—of great historical interest. Despite fires, earthquakes, and simple neglect, many remain standing thanks to the creativity of owners, architects, and municipalities in finding ways to restore and preserve these evocative palimpsests of the past.

The challenges were daunting. Lacking electricity, all such complexes had to be wired (not just rewired) with up-to-code modern installations, not to mention internet connections. Lacking modern plumbing, all had to be retrofitted with a supply of running water, sewers, and new bathrooms. Lacking heating and air conditioning, all had to augment fireplaces and braziers with modern HVAC systems for heating, ventilation, and cooling. The difficulty of making such improvements was compounded by the necessity to accommodate them within rigid stone walls, that themselves required repointing and repair.

Wedding venue

The Castello di Villalta is situated atop a mound in the countryside overlooking vineyards and fields of grain with views south all the way to the Adriatic on a clear day. Home of the Della Torre family since the fifteenth century, the medieval castle was badly damaged by an earthquake and a peasant uprising in 1511 but was soon rebuilt and expanded with a Renaissance wing. The site of a Della Torre fratricide in 1699, the castle was abandoned after the execution of Lucio Della Torre in 1723 for the murder of his Venetian wife and became something of a haunted house, with rumors of subterranean escape passages and Lucio’s ghost prowling the walls at night. The Della Torre heirs sold off the castle, with crumbling walls and fallen ceilings, in 1905. During the First World War it served as an Austro -Hungarian command post after the defeat of the Italian army in the Battle of Caporetto. After passing through several hands and partial restorations, the  castle was reacquired by descendants of the Caporiacco family, its original owners, in 1999, and today—carefully restored and updated—it serves not only as a captivating venue for wedding celebrations, but also as a site for concerts, meetings, and cultural events.

Castle museum

The Castello di Udine stands atop an acropolis overlooking the city. After the earthquake of 1511, it was built as a replacement of the thirteenth-century residence of the Venetian Luogotenente of the Patria del Friuli. With the fall of the Venetian republic in 1797, Napoleon ceded the building to the Austrian army, which used it as a headquarters and barracks. The massive building became a museum in 1906 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the unification of the Friuli with Italy, and now hosts the Museo del Risorgimento and the Museo Archeologico on the ground floor; the Galleria d’Arte Antica, with paintings from the fourteenth through the nineteenth century, on the main floor; and the Museo della Fotografia on the top floor. It also features numismatic, sculpture, and plaster cast collections and galleries of prints and drawings, as well as art and photo libraries.

Municipal offices

The fourteenth-century Castello di Colloredo di Monte Albano, consisting of a central block, three towers, and two wings, was the residence of the Della Torre’s closest relatives. Also badly damaged in 1511, it was rebuilt by the mid-sixteenth century with a studio frescoed by the artist Giovanni da Udine. Over the years, it was the home of poets and writers, including Ermes da Colloredo (1622-1692) and Ippolito Nievo (1831-1861). The Friuli was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1976, and the east wing of the castle crumbled to the ground. But the west wing, although damaged, survived and presently houses the Comunità Collinare del Friuli—a consortium dedicated to safeguarding the environment and promoting culture, tourism, and planning for fifteen small communities. The remainder of the castle is still undergoing reconstruction.

Spiritual retreat

A few castles retain their original function. The sprawling Castello di San Martino, perched on a hillside above the town of Ceneda (now part of Vittorio Veneto), was built in the tenth century as the residence of the prince-bishop of the diocese and expanded over the years by a Della Torre bishop and others. After the fall of the Venetian republic, the new Kingdom of Italy passed a law in 1866 requiring the sale of church properties. The castle was put up for auction, but there were no buyers and it remained the property of the state. After the complex suffered significant damage in an earthquake in 1873, it was returned to the diocese in 1881. Restored by the church, it remains the residence of the bishop to this day. But it too has been adapted for modern use with two chapels, 30 guest rooms, a dining room, meeting rooms, and a large garden.

Evocative landmark

Some castles remain picturesque ruins. The eighteenth-century façade of the villa built atop the remains of the thirteenth-century Castello di Polcenigo (once the marital home of a Della Torre daughter) remains intact, but the remainder was gutted by fire. It now stands like an empty doll house, with the rooms open to the sky. The fireplaces and fragments of frescoes are still visible, along with sweeping view of the surrounding countryside, to the adventurous who climb a monumental stone staircase of 366 steps or wend their way up a subterranean passage from the town below.

These palimpsests of stone and timber embed the present in the feudal past. The medieval castles no longer serve as enclosures as defense, but as welcoming venues of hospitality, tourism, and cultural enrichment.

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Victorian 3D: virtual adventures in the stereoscope

Armchair travel is more popular than ever today, making this an excellent time to explore a key moment in the history of home-bound travel. In the Victorian era, people used a stereoscope to launch themselves on virtual journeys to far-off lands from their own parlors. Users inserted a stereograph, twinned photos of a slightly discrepant image, into the device and then peeped into the eyepiece, where the image leaped into startling three dimensionality. The stereoscope created an immersive you-are-there illusion, a feeling that was pleasurable and even dizzying.

The stereoscope was actually invented as a scientific experiment. In 1832, Charles Wheatstone wanted to prove that human depth perception was a result of the distance between our two eyes. If this were the case, he hypothesized, then the eyes could be tricked into perceiving depth by each being presented with a slightly different two-dimensional image. The first stereoscope used two drawings, but scientists quickly realized that photographs—invented in 1839—could create an extraordinary illusionary effect within the stereoscope.

The lenticular stereoscope debuted at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition, where it was seen and admired by Queen Victoria. When she received a gift model, the ensuing craze provoked the sale of 250,000 viewers in three months. During the era of the “parlor stereoscope,” the device became a familiar fixture in Victorian homes, and stereographic photographs eventually numbered in the millions. (This massive output explains why you can still find stereographs at flea markets today, usually selling for a few dollars or pounds apiece). The stereoscope was called a “philosophical toy,” along with devices like the kaleidoscope and zoetrope: these were all entertaining, family-friendly commodities that were invented to demonstrate scientific principles of optics.

Stereographs depicted all genres of photography, from still-lifes to pornography. But the majority of stereographs depicted places, especially places where British people desired to travel. During the first wave of the stereoscope’s popularity, in the 1850s and 1860s, stereographs captured the romantic and picturesque destinations on Britain’s tourist track. These locations had actually been chosen well before the invention of photography. In the late eighteenth century, when the Napoleonic Wars closed off the Continent to British travelers, tourists went in search of “the picturesque” in the ruined abbeys and cathedrals across the UK and Ireland. The same spots that artists had previously canonized in picturesque paintings now became mass-produced views in the stereoscope.

One of the most popular British stereoscopic destinations was Tintern Abbey, the ruined stony arches of rural Wales. William Wordsworth’s poem about the area had made the abbey into the foremost destination for adventurous travelers with Romantic sensibilities. Now stereoscope owners could use the device to travel virtually to the Gothic abbey, letting their eyes wander along ruined walls traced with ivy, or looking up at massive arches open to the sky. Although the stereoscope epitomized modern technology, with its lenses, optics, and photographic cards, the kinds of images that viewers consumed inside the stereoscope tended to look back into a romanticized history. (The images gave no indication, meanwhile, of the roaring iron factory near Tintern Abbey that disturbed visiting tourists). These details remind us that technology itself is not inherently oriented toward the future; in fact, new media often intermingle with old media, as new technologies enable nostalgic, fantastical journeys into the past.

It was rare for stereographs to portray factories, crowded cities, or other mundane aspects of everyday nineteenth-century life. Instead, photographers captured scenes of picturesque beauty, old towns, peasants in “authentic” costume, churches, ruined castles, scenic landscapes. One popular set of images from beyond Britain was titled “America in the Stereoscope” (1857-59). While some of the scenes captured American cities like Boston and Washington, DC, most of the stereographs portrayed scenes of natural beauty—echoing the stereotypical British assumption that the former colonies were less cultured and more “primitive” than the UK. In fact, most of the American stereoscopic images portrayed waterfalls, from both the US and Canada, uniting both under the rubric of a nature-themed “New World.” Waterfalls were especially popular stereoscopic subjects because of their astonishing depth effects, as their rushing, blurred waters leaped out at the viewer. “America in the Stereoscope” featured at least ten different views of Niagara Falls and its environs. An 1861 London reviewer of the series wrote ecstatically: “The Horseshoe Fall [of Niagara] affords a good idea of the awful power of the mass of descending water; we can almost hear the deafening roar. The effect of viewing this little photograph in the stereoscope is to make one giddy.”

Another extremely popular mid-century destination in the stereoscope was Egypt. Travel to Egypt was tremendously expensive, arduous, and beyond the reach of most nineteenth-century people. Hence Francis Frith’s 1857-59 series of views from Egypt met with resounding interest and acclaim, accompanying other forms of British “Egyptomania.” Frith’s images today seem starkly beautiful, with the Sphinx, pyramids, and ancient temples rendered in austere desert landscapes. Yet the realism of Frith’s photographic medium shouldn’t obscure some of the fantasies generated by the images, as they carefully omitted any signs of Egyptian modernity. In fact, Egypt was the site of numerous nineteenth-century imperial intrigues, and host to mingled cultures under European colonial influence. The stereoscope instead created an illusory Egypt, implicitly defining British modernity against the backdrop of an Egypt that seemed buried in the past.

Many of the pleasures proffered by the Victorian stereoscope will seem familiar today. A popular twentieth-century inheritor of the stereoscope was the red plastic “Viewmaster,” whose cards animated 3D scenes of fairy tales or exotic destinations—a toy still being made, even though it’s been updated by virtual reality goggles. On YouTube, travel videos today boast of high-definition 4K streams, even while they avoid grimy, modern urban realities in favor of picturesque landscapes and ancient ruins. Cutting-edge technology continues to enable ever-more illusionistic spectacles of the past. The technology itself might have changed, but the fantasies that the technology helps to enable seem very long-lived, as we escape from our mundane, home-bound lives to stunning, faraway lands.

Featured image: Stereograph of Niagara Falls. “American Fall, Niagara—Winter Scene.” America in the Stereoscope Series, London Stereoscopic Company, 1859. (Via The New York Public Library, public domain)

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SHAPE today and tomorrow: Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Julia Black (part two)

SHAPE (Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities for People and the Economy) research helps us to make sense of the past, to inform the present, and develop a vision for the future. Considering the last year alone in which the vital work of STEM researchers in developing vaccines and treating COVID-19 has been closely followed across the globe, it is also important to acknowledge that SHAPE research has played an important role in our response to the pandemic. From considering ethics to inform how vaccines should be allocated amongst the population, to looking back at the societal and economic impact of pandemics through history, SHAPE research has provided us with valuable insights across a vast spectrum of different areas.

This second part of our Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy, Director of Content Strategy & Acquisitions at OUP, and Professor Julia Black CBE FCA, Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and President-elect of the British Academy, reflects on how SHAPE disciplines can help us to understand the impact of the events of the pandemic and look towards the future of SHAPE.

In part one of our Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Professor Julia Black, they introduce SHAPE and what it means to them—if you missed it, you can read it here.

In the current context of the coronavirus pandemic, how can SHAPE subjects help us make sense of how the last year has impacted us and the world in which we live?

Sophie Goldsworthy: The last year has been testing in many ways. But we might turn to SHAPE subjects as we start to evaluate what life looks like after the pandemic, assessing the human impact, finding new ways to connect, and working out how to salvage the best of what we have been left with.

SHAPE subjects can help us start to understand where we are now and drive innovative solutions. We can draw on what these subjects tell us as we endeavour to improve on the inclusivity of our virtual networks; and to figure out how we retain balance in our ways of working and flexibility around our caring and other social responsibilities; and as we think again about how we might inhabit global city spaces and reimagine transport networks with sustainability and environmental impacts in mind. Scientists tell us that birdsong changed during the shutdowns, that wild animals moved quickly to inhabit the spaces we vacated, that air quality improved as transport ground to a halt. SHAPE subjects can help us to think about the ways in which we learn from and build on this enforced hiatus.

Julia Black: It’s difficult to think of a single area where SHAPE subjects don’t help us make sense of how COVID has impacted us and where they won’t be relevant in thinking about the future. The enforced lockdown of the world’s population has been a natural experiment of a scale no policy maker would never have volunteered to undertake, but our clearer skies, quieter roads, and noisier wildlife have made us all acutely aware of the impact our ways of living were having on our planet, and to the vulnerabilities to which we are thereby exposing ourselves as well.

We have turned to literature and, virtually at least, to the arts to provide us with solace, enrichment, entertainment, and sheer relief. We have turned to history for insights into how societies in the past have been fundamentally changed due to pandemics and to philosophy for reflections on how we want our societies to be. As we re-think how we will live, how we will travel, how we will work, insights from anthropology, geography, economics, psychology, politics, literature, design, architecture, and art, to name but a few, will all be essential.

We also face other challenges which COVID has revealed or exacerbated: to equality and inclusivity, to democracy and to human rights, to the shifting imbalances in power within societies and across nations. And meanwhile the need to address climate change and enhance biodiversity are becoming ever more pressing. Ultimately SHAPE subjects help us imagine and evaluate what kind of world we want to live in, and what kind of life we want to have.

The pandemic has undoubtedly had a profound impact on universities and the student experience. Why should prospective students choose to study a SHAPE subject, and what unique skills do you think SHAPE graduates bring to the workforce?

SG: SHAPE graduates are highly employable, bringing a wealth of skills to the workforce, and prospective students might be attracted to these subjects for the same reasons. They help us make sense of the human experience and develop our capacity for critical thinking and communication. They encourage problem solving, creativity, and curiosity, and help graduates approach a question from many angles, working collaboratively and with empathy. In a world beset by challenges, among them not only the pandemic, but climate change, structural inequalities, the rise of populism in some quarters and nationalism in others, SHAPE graduates are central to the development of the versatile, resilient workforce that will help us respond to these challenges, identify future opportunities, and nurture innovation.

JB: Studying SHAPE subjects provides both knowledge and skills which are valuable to all aspects of society, whether a person is working in a business or the public sector, or for a charity, or in the voluntary sector, or as a freelancer, or an entrepreneur. Some of the subjects have more direct application than others, such as law, finance, journalism, languages, education, design, or the arts, but in different ways all provide knowledge of how to analyse complex problems, interpret and integrate information and ideas, test the strength of competing arguments, see things from another’s point of view, create new inspirations and forms of expression, and understand how and why context matters.  Many of the skills of analysis, rigour, interpretation and creativity can be learned studying either SHAPE or STEM subjects, but it is their focus on the human world which helps those who study SHAPE understand people and the societies they live in, and the values they live by.

Where do you see SHAPE in the future? How do you think these fields of study might change?

SG: Just as we think about SHAPE and STEM as complementing each other, so we’re seeing an increasing move towards interdisciplinarity within SHAPE subjects, both in the academy—with university trends including the amalgamation of departments and interdisciplinary research programmes—and in our publishing programme, with multi-disciplinary content one of our fastest growing areas. Our disciplinary analysis shows a fascinating web of connections between subjects, showing how our existing content clusters and is used online, and we’re excited to explore this more at OUP, developing our acquisitions approach to reflect changing practices within the academy and encourage emerging spheres of research, as these subjects aggregate to redefine fields of study.

JB: I think the SHAPE subjects are changing in three ways. The first is a growing inter- or multi-disciplinary engagement across SHAPE disciplines and with those of STEM, often focused around particular challenges or themes, such as health, climate change, or conservation. The second is the awareness that the languages of mathematics and computer codes can be used to interrogate questions which preoccupy social scientists and humanities scholars, just as they can those of physicists or biologists. Digital humanities and computational social sciences combine knowledge from languages, history, media and communications, economics, information studies, graphic design, computer sciences, data analytics, machine learning, AI, and more to analyse texts, music, or data on a scale which was previously unimaginable, providing powerful new insights. Thirdly, both SHAPE and STEM disciplines are adopting critical stances towards the other in ways which are, or have the potential, to change the way in which each are conducted: the challenge to social sciences to produce results which are replicable, verifiable, and falsifiable, for example; and the challenge to science and technology to be conducted in ways which are ethical, non-discriminatory, and which take into account their impact on societies. The core disciplinary pillars within SHAPE and STEM subjects remain strong, but increasingly we are seeing them combined in new and exciting ways.

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Introducing SHAPE: Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Julia Black (part one)

OUP is excited to support the newly created SHAPE initiative—Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy. SHAPE has been coined to enable us to clearly communicate the value that these disciplines bring to not only enriching the world in which we live, but also enhancing our understanding of it. The contributions that SHAPE subjects make are more important now than ever as they can help us to navigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global economy, dramatically altered our quotidian routines, and changed the way we communicate with one another, against the backdrop of climate change and urgent calls to address structural injustice.

In the first instalment this two-part Q&A, we spoke to Sophie Goldsworthy, Director of Content Strategy & Acquisitions here at OUP, and Professor Julia Black CBE FCA, Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and President-elect of the British Academy, to find out more about SHAPE and what it means to them.

Firstly, could you tell us a little bit about your background and current position, and what SHAPE means to you?

Sophie Goldsworthy: I’ve worked in publishing for approaching 30 years, 25 of them at OUP. My first role at the Press was on the Literature list and I currently run our humanities, social sciences, and trade programmes in the UK, as well as directing Oxford’s content strategy more broadly across the research publishing business.

At a time when the content needs of the university sector are evolving, leading to shifts in research publishing, my role is about developing our focus and building data and evidence into our approach to content acquisition, more closely aligning commissioning with what librarians, researchers, and readers want, and working to maximise the reach, impact, and amplification of the scholarship we publish.

Oxford is the world’s largest university press, and SHAPE subjects sit at the very heart of our offering, giving us breadth which in turn underlines a complementary view of the subjects. SHAPE gives us a better way to articulate that mutual, porous relationship, helps us move past an arts/sciences dichotomy to a place where each enhances and supports the other.

Julia Black: My academic interests span social sciences and humanities. I focus on how governments and other organisations regulate behaviours, systems, and processes to address complex problems, such as environmental management, or financial stability, or AI, and what values guide, or should guide, those processes. Given that problems are multi-dimensional, trying to address them requires engaging with technical, scientific aspects of the issues as well as the social and ethical elements. As my principal research questions are always centred around people and organisations, social sciences and humanities dominate, but for me, it seems quite natural to engage with several disciplines, across SHAPE and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), in order to understand and address the multiple dimensions of a problem.

I’ve also always worked quite fluidly across the worlds of academia and public policy, and I’m constantly struck by the huge reliance which government places on social science and humanities in seeking guidance and evidence for its policies, and yet the contribution those disciplines can make, and are making, is often under-recognised and under-valued. And when I look beyond policy to the vibrancy of the arts, the richness of literature, the diversity of our society, and even to the structure and dynamics of our economy, SHAPE subjects are everywhere. So for me SHAPE is a way to celebrate the value of social sciences, humanities, and the arts, and to demonstrate their relevance and value to ourselves and to society. It’s also to encourage people to study them, and to build meaningful lives and contribute to society using the knowledge and skills they gain in doing so. For we need them now, more than ever.

What are the benefits in bringing together the arts, humanities, and social sciences disciplines under the SHAPE umbrella?

SG: How we describe a thing has the potential to accord or diminish its power. At its heart, SHAPE offers us the opportunity to begin to tell the story of a set of subjects which might seem at first glance to be disparate. It allows us to draw together the ways in which they contribute value to society, helping us make sense of the human experience, develop our understanding of global issues, and work to find solutions.

JB: SHAPE is offering social sciences, humanities, and the arts their own descriptor, providing a coherence to a heterogenous set of subjects in a way which celebrates their diversity but emphasises what connects them: a focus on the human world—on people and societies across time and space.

It’s important to emphasise that we are not “setting up” social sciences, humanities, and the arts in opposition to STEM. SHAPE subjects have their own value which is on a par with STEM, they are just differently focused: on the human world, rather than the natural or physical worlds. There are areas within each where they operate largely separately, but if we want to understand how humans interact with the natural and physical world, then we need the insights gained from connecting both sets of disciplines. There are also opportunities to use the knowledge and insights from each to inform the other.

How can SHAPE and STEM disciplines complement each other in our pursuit of knowledge?

SG: The pandemic has reinforced how essential STEM subjects are, as we look to medical and technical solutions: witness only the breath-taking speed at which vaccines have been developed. But SHAPE disciplines complement STEM in myriad ways—and conversely leaving them out of the mix can have troubling implications.

We might need to draw on behavioural economics and “nudge” theory to help influence how people act, changing the message around mask wearing from “protect yourself” to “protect others,” for example. Or to take a holistic approach to data interpretation to circumnavigate structural inequalities, where the price we otherwise pay is a high one. The past year has been full of stories about “one size fits all” PPE that leaves female health workers poorly protected, or remote education initiatives that overlook those children for whom a school lunch provides the only meal of the day.

At its most straightforward, learning the stories of past pandemics can enlighten us in the present. How and why do conspiracy theories and misinformation proliferate in an outbreak, for example, and what should we learn as we navigate precisely that set of circumstances all over again in the rollout of a new vaccination programme.

JB: SHAPE subjects can complement STEM, and STEM subjects can complement SHAPE. In some cases, one discipline may be more in the lead than the other, but the synergies still exist. Some SHAPE subjects are through their approaches closer to STEM, for example in their use of quantitative and statistical methodologies and data analytics, and some directly cross the boundaries, such as mental health and wellbeing. However, we could do more to illustrate how STEM and SHAPE subjects can together enhance our knowledge, and what we create from that knowledge.

Some have asked why we aren’t satisfied with the term STEAM to describe this interaction. The answer is that STEAM focuses only on the interaction of art and design with STEM subjects, in other words it only looks at the “A” in SHAPE, not the “S” and the ”H.” Whilst art and design are hugely valuable to the design of products developed by technology, or as ways to visualise the natural and physical worlds, for example, there are many more benefits to be gained from the interaction of STEM disciplines across the social sciences, humanities and the arts. Changes in an ecosystem are frequently rooted in human behaviour; managing pandemics requires knowledge of history, cultures and behaviours, as well as economics and logistics; the search engines we have become so reliant on use natural language programming based on linguistics; and for science and technology to be legitimate it is imperative that it is developed and used in ways which are aligned with our ethics and values.

But these examples are the tip of the iceberg; there are multiple instances where the insights of each enhances the other, and it is often when they are combined that truly transformative developments in our knowledge, understanding, innovation, and creativity can occur.

Read part two of our Q&A, in which Sophie Goldsworthy and Professor Julia Black discuss the importance of SHAPE today in light of the pandemic, and how consider how it may evolve in the future.

Featured image by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

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