Papers by Katrina Grant
Humanities Research Journal, 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic created huge challenges for the galleries, libraries, archives and museum (... more The COVID-19 pandemic created huge challenges for the galleries, libraries, archives and museum (GLAM) sector as institutions were shut and travel and tourism became almost non-existent. Globally, cultural institutions large and small suddenly had to rely almost entirely on digital platforms to engage their missing audiences. Digital transformation was already an important part of the sector, though progress had been uneven across different organisations and in different countries. Since at least the mid-2000s, there has been a rapid increase in the mass digitisation of cultural collections, the introduction of social media as a tool for marketing and audience engagement, as well as digitally mediated user experiences of in-person exhibitions.1 In some institutions, the arrival of COVID and lockdowns sped up an embrace of digital technologies that was already in progress; in others, new directions and new platforms were embraced.2 However, the ‘digital pivot’ from 2020 also revealed huge gaps in capacity and funding for many institutions and made the digital divide and challenges of accessibility on the audience end more obvious. Digital mediums increased accessibility for some but reduced it for others.
The Routledge Research Companion to Digital Medieval Literature, 2018
Our ongoing research project "Digital Cartographies of the Roman Campagna" is developing an inter... more Our ongoing research project "Digital Cartographies of the Roman Campagna" is developing an interactive digital map to explore the relationship between artistic representation of the Roman Campagna and the history of the place itself, in the context of ecology, climate change,
disease and social history from 1600 to 1900.1 In the following essay we discuss the rationale behind the decision to create a digital map as the key research outcome, explain the methodology being developed for working with digitized versions of historic maps, with a particular focus on georectification, and reflect on some of the representational and conceptual issues that georectification raises and outline our plans to address these challenges in our future research.
Histoire culturelle de l'Europe, 2018
Résumé
La présente contribution considère la façon dont le jardin « Don Bosco Parrasio », où se r... more Résumé
La présente contribution considère la façon dont le jardin « Don Bosco Parrasio », où se réunissaient les membres de l'Académie des Arcades de Rome, était non seulement un lieu d'évasion agréable, mais aussi un lieu de nostalgie et de deuil. Cela se voit dans la conception des espaces physiques : chaque lieu concret du « Don Bosco Parrasio » servait à présenter les lapidi di memoria – les mémoriaux d’Arcadiens défunts – et comportait souvent de l'imagerie funéraire. On le voit également dans la poésie écrite pour être interprétée lors des réunions tenues dans ce jardin, qui remémoraient souvent des membres défunts, des amis ou des membres de leur famille. On en retrouve la trace dans l’évocation poétique que fait Crescimbeni de l'Académie et de ses activités dans son livre L'Arcadia paru en 1708. Le présent article explore les représentations du jardin arcadien comme lieu de mélancolie, de deuil et de nostalgie et illustre l’idée que l’évocation de ce paysage « hors du temps » comme espace de mélancolie est un exemple de nostalgie à saisir non pas comme paralysante (comme on le lit souvent), mais comme un ingrédient essentiel du changement culturel.
Abstract
This paper considers the way in which the garden, the « Bosco Parrasio », in which members of Rome’s Arcadian Academy met was not only a place of pleasurable escapism, but also a place of longing and mourning. This can be seen in the design of physical spaces – each real site that hosted the « Bosco Parrasio » was required to display the lapidi di memoria – memorials to departed Arcadians, and often included funerary imagery. It is also found in the poetry written to be performed at those garden meetings, which often memorialised departed members, friends, or family. And, it is threaded through Crescimbeni’s poetic imaging of the Academy and its activities in his 1708 book L’Arcadia. This paper will explore those depictions of the Arcadian garden as a site of melancholy, mourning and nostalgia and explore the idea that the evocation of this ‘timeless’ landscape as a space for melancholy is an example of nostalgia not as stultifying (as we often read it), but, as a necessary ingredient in cultural change.
Emotion and the Seduction of the Senses, Baroque to Neo-Baroque, 2018
While the capacity of music to move the emotions has received a good deal of attention from music... more While the capacity of music to move the emotions has received a good deal of attention from musicologists, philosophers, and psychologists, the history of set design has not considered how these sets created immersive environments that induced an affective response. Instead, the attitudes expressed by Addison continue to cast a long shadow over research into music and the performing arts. Twentieth-century scholarship has often been dismissive of set design, regarding it as formulaic, unimportant, and a distraction from the serious poetry and sublime music. This dismissal of scenography has come about because set design has typically been studied only on the margins of musicology, art and architectural history, and theater studies. This is, in part, because there are virtually no opera sets that survive from the baroque period, requiring them to be reconstructed from drawings made as part of the design process and from engravings made after to commemorate the sets. These are typically monochrome and two dimensional, whereas in reality sets were vividly colored and three dimensional. In addition, much of the serious scholarship that has been done has concentrated on the progression of visual technologies.9 Studying the emotional effect of stage sets prompts us to look more closely at their reception, rather than at their construction. To understand how audiences reacted to the visual aspect of a performance is important not only because it fills in another missing piece in our attempts to reconstruct what a theatrical performance was like in the baroque period, but also because the visual spectacle itself generated so much controversy. There were endless debates, along similar lines to those discussed above, about whether operas should have sets, and whether performances were too focused upon the magnificence of the setting and the ingenuity of the machines at the expense of the poetry and narrative
Rethinking Social Media and Extremism, 2022
In 2009 the protests against election result in Iran began to play out not just on the streets of... more In 2009 the protests against election result in Iran began to play out not just on the streets of the capital (check) but online. Shortly after the protests Time magazine described Twitter (at that point the platform was only three years old) as 'ideal for a mass protest movement, both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control.’ Over ten years later the latter seems true, but the idea that it is serving the ‘average citizen’ is now less convincing. The potential for online social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc to be subject to manipulation and used for the spread of misinformation and abuse has been in the spotlight in recent years. The examples for this chapter are drawn from several key moments that continue to have resonance for us in the twenty-first century when we think about changing power structures and the physical places that house them. The first are the public fora of ancient Greece and Rome, spaces for the voicing of public opinion existed in both societies and continue to be closely linked with our modern ideas of democracy, governance and the ideals of civil society. Taking ideas and decisions to the people was regarded as a cornerstone of these democratic societies, yet we also know that these gatherings of the crowd were exploited and manipulated for power by politicians and generals. The second example is to look at the shift in the use of public space in 16th and 17th century Europe. As many cities and states in Europe transitioned from republics to dukedoms and absolutist monarchies, public and semi-public spaces were used as stages to perform newly imposed social hierarchies. The crowd was invited to participate but was also carefully controlled; a reflection of their changing status. These events exploited new technologies and culture as tools to refashion society in a new image and resonates strongly with our contemporary moment where new digital technologies are also doing this.
"After a lacklustre attempt to become a painter, William Kent (1685–1748) developed a career as a... more "After a lacklustre attempt to become a painter, William Kent (1685–1748) developed a career as a garden designer, working mainly for Lord Burlington and other patrons in his circle. His
gardens represent some of the earliest gardens of a style that became known as the ‘English Landscape Garden’, exemplified by Stourhead in Wiltshire, Rousham in Oxfordshire and Stowe in Buckinghamshire; so named in part because, in the past, scholars have pointed to landscape painting as the primary influence on the creation of this new style."
The garden theatre can take many forms: it can erupt forth in an explosion of water and sound as ... more The garden theatre can take many forms: it can erupt forth in an explosion of water and sound as in the teatro d’acqua; it can appear carved into a hedge as a teatro di verzura; or it can calmly wait to be filled with performers as in a teatro avanti il palazzo. The garden theatre was first a feature of the Baroque garden in Italy, before finding its way into the gardens of France, appearing in the treatises of Dezaillier d’Argenville and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, with examples eventually appearing in a variety of forms in the gardens of Germany, England and beyond. The earliest hedge theatres are found in a cluster of gardens around the Tuscan city of Lucca.
The city of Lucca was never limited to the urban area within the walls. Autumn and winter would b... more The city of Lucca was never limited to the urban area within the walls. Autumn and winter would be lived in the city palazzo, with life concentrating upon commercial activities enlivened by entertainments such as music and theatre. In spring and summer life was relocated en masse to the villa. This article outlines the essentials of Lucchese garden design during the Baroque period. It also discusses the role of these gardens in the cultural life of 17th and 18th century Lucca.
Books by Katrina Grant
Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture, 2022
Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture argues that the... more Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture argues that theatre, and the new genre of opera in particular, played a key role in creating a new vision of landscape during the long seventeenth century in Italy. It explores how the idea of gardens as theatres emerged at the same time as opera was developed in Italian courts around the turn of the seventeenth century. During this period landscape painting emerged as a genre and the aesthetic of designed landscapes and gardens was wholly transformed, which resulted in a reconceptualization of the relationship between humans and landscape. The importance of theatre as a key cultural expression in Italy is widely recognised, but the visual culture of theatre and its relationship to the broader artistic culture is still being untangled. This book argues that the combination of narratives playing out in natural settings (Arcadia, Parnassus, Alcina), the emotional responses elicited by sets and special effects (the apparent magical manipulation of the laws of nature), and, the way that garden theatres were used for displays of power and to enact princely virtue and social order, all contributed to this shifting idea of landscape in the seventeenth century.
Conference Presentations by Katrina Grant
MW21, 2021
This paper will share the success of research-led teaching and GLAM sector collaborations develop... more This paper will share the success of research-led teaching and GLAM sector collaborations developed as part of the Digital Humanities (DH) teaching program at the Australian National University. This collaborative project offered a shared solution to two distinct problems. For teaching in DH we found that students, while fascinated by the GLAM and DH crossover space, struggled to evaluate the challenges and affordances of digital resources developed for collection-based research and engagement when studied in the abstract. The students were unfamiliar with the pragmatics and realities involved in working with materials from the GLAM sector as they came from diverse academic backgrounds (computer science, linguistics, engineering). For our GLAM partners, project deadlines, organisational structures, and, most importantly, budgets constrained innovative work with digitised collections. The pilot program ran across two courses in DH, one with the National Museum of Australia that focused on development of web-based educational resources, and one with the British Library Labs where students could develop a project focused on any of the following: Research, Artistic, Community, and, Teaching/Learning. This pilot program has now become a permanent fixture of our teaching. It has offered a productive way for a small research centre to engage with a range of GLAM partners, and offered them the chance to see how to use collections in the digital space, from marketing to games to advanced research projects. Meanwhile, students in DH from diverse backgrounds are shown the opportunities for future work pathways in GLAM, and exposed to not just the technical challenges of digital project development, but the social and institutional ones as well.
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Papers by Katrina Grant
disease and social history from 1600 to 1900.1 In the following essay we discuss the rationale behind the decision to create a digital map as the key research outcome, explain the methodology being developed for working with digitized versions of historic maps, with a particular focus on georectification, and reflect on some of the representational and conceptual issues that georectification raises and outline our plans to address these challenges in our future research.
La présente contribution considère la façon dont le jardin « Don Bosco Parrasio », où se réunissaient les membres de l'Académie des Arcades de Rome, était non seulement un lieu d'évasion agréable, mais aussi un lieu de nostalgie et de deuil. Cela se voit dans la conception des espaces physiques : chaque lieu concret du « Don Bosco Parrasio » servait à présenter les lapidi di memoria – les mémoriaux d’Arcadiens défunts – et comportait souvent de l'imagerie funéraire. On le voit également dans la poésie écrite pour être interprétée lors des réunions tenues dans ce jardin, qui remémoraient souvent des membres défunts, des amis ou des membres de leur famille. On en retrouve la trace dans l’évocation poétique que fait Crescimbeni de l'Académie et de ses activités dans son livre L'Arcadia paru en 1708. Le présent article explore les représentations du jardin arcadien comme lieu de mélancolie, de deuil et de nostalgie et illustre l’idée que l’évocation de ce paysage « hors du temps » comme espace de mélancolie est un exemple de nostalgie à saisir non pas comme paralysante (comme on le lit souvent), mais comme un ingrédient essentiel du changement culturel.
Abstract
This paper considers the way in which the garden, the « Bosco Parrasio », in which members of Rome’s Arcadian Academy met was not only a place of pleasurable escapism, but also a place of longing and mourning. This can be seen in the design of physical spaces – each real site that hosted the « Bosco Parrasio » was required to display the lapidi di memoria – memorials to departed Arcadians, and often included funerary imagery. It is also found in the poetry written to be performed at those garden meetings, which often memorialised departed members, friends, or family. And, it is threaded through Crescimbeni’s poetic imaging of the Academy and its activities in his 1708 book L’Arcadia. This paper will explore those depictions of the Arcadian garden as a site of melancholy, mourning and nostalgia and explore the idea that the evocation of this ‘timeless’ landscape as a space for melancholy is an example of nostalgia not as stultifying (as we often read it), but, as a necessary ingredient in cultural change.
gardens represent some of the earliest gardens of a style that became known as the ‘English Landscape Garden’, exemplified by Stourhead in Wiltshire, Rousham in Oxfordshire and Stowe in Buckinghamshire; so named in part because, in the past, scholars have pointed to landscape painting as the primary influence on the creation of this new style."
Books by Katrina Grant
Conference Presentations by Katrina Grant
disease and social history from 1600 to 1900.1 In the following essay we discuss the rationale behind the decision to create a digital map as the key research outcome, explain the methodology being developed for working with digitized versions of historic maps, with a particular focus on georectification, and reflect on some of the representational and conceptual issues that georectification raises and outline our plans to address these challenges in our future research.
La présente contribution considère la façon dont le jardin « Don Bosco Parrasio », où se réunissaient les membres de l'Académie des Arcades de Rome, était non seulement un lieu d'évasion agréable, mais aussi un lieu de nostalgie et de deuil. Cela se voit dans la conception des espaces physiques : chaque lieu concret du « Don Bosco Parrasio » servait à présenter les lapidi di memoria – les mémoriaux d’Arcadiens défunts – et comportait souvent de l'imagerie funéraire. On le voit également dans la poésie écrite pour être interprétée lors des réunions tenues dans ce jardin, qui remémoraient souvent des membres défunts, des amis ou des membres de leur famille. On en retrouve la trace dans l’évocation poétique que fait Crescimbeni de l'Académie et de ses activités dans son livre L'Arcadia paru en 1708. Le présent article explore les représentations du jardin arcadien comme lieu de mélancolie, de deuil et de nostalgie et illustre l’idée que l’évocation de ce paysage « hors du temps » comme espace de mélancolie est un exemple de nostalgie à saisir non pas comme paralysante (comme on le lit souvent), mais comme un ingrédient essentiel du changement culturel.
Abstract
This paper considers the way in which the garden, the « Bosco Parrasio », in which members of Rome’s Arcadian Academy met was not only a place of pleasurable escapism, but also a place of longing and mourning. This can be seen in the design of physical spaces – each real site that hosted the « Bosco Parrasio » was required to display the lapidi di memoria – memorials to departed Arcadians, and often included funerary imagery. It is also found in the poetry written to be performed at those garden meetings, which often memorialised departed members, friends, or family. And, it is threaded through Crescimbeni’s poetic imaging of the Academy and its activities in his 1708 book L’Arcadia. This paper will explore those depictions of the Arcadian garden as a site of melancholy, mourning and nostalgia and explore the idea that the evocation of this ‘timeless’ landscape as a space for melancholy is an example of nostalgia not as stultifying (as we often read it), but, as a necessary ingredient in cultural change.
gardens represent some of the earliest gardens of a style that became known as the ‘English Landscape Garden’, exemplified by Stourhead in Wiltshire, Rousham in Oxfordshire and Stowe in Buckinghamshire; so named in part because, in the past, scholars have pointed to landscape painting as the primary influence on the creation of this new style."