Water, Heritage and Sustainable Development

Research

Projects

EarlyGeoPraxis

"EarlyGeoPraxis - Positioned Cosmology in Early Modernity: The Geo-Praxis of Water-and-Land Management in Venice" is a project associated with the UNESCO Chair. 

It addresses the cosmological embedment of geological praxis in the early modern period (15th-18th century) by focusing on the ‘water city’, Venice, as a case study for the comprehension of the relationship between nature and civilization.

The Water City

The Max Planck Partner Group in Venice, The Water City: The Political Epistemology of Hydrogeological Praxis (partner of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science – Berlin), is associated with the UNESCO Chair, as well:

The Partner Group The Water City brings the city and the environments of Venice into focus as the basis for historical and comparative studies on global geo-anthropological processes. It takes into account the multi-faceted reality of a ‘hydropolis’, which has always constituted a crossroad of environmental, cultural, political, economic, and migratory phenomena. Moreover, comparative historical and cross-cultural cases are developed through exchanges with German, American and Indian scholars working on kindred projects.

 

Publications

Cristina Baldacci, Shaul Bassi, Lucio De Capitani, Pietro Daniel Omodeo (eds.):
2022, "Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide", Venice, wetlands.

Cristina Baldacci, Emiliano Guaraldo (eds.):
2023-2024, “Archiving the Anthropocene: New Taxonomies Between Art and Science”, Holotipus 4-5.

Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Sebastiano Trevisani:
2022, “Historical Geoanthropology in Venice,” in Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 11/22: 13:1-13:22.

Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Heiner Krellig:
2021, “Venice’s Marriage to the Sea: Ritual, Representation, and Environmental Transformation”, in "SILKROADIA. The Silk-Road Universities Network’s Web Magazine", 3, 1, pp. 185-193.

  • 2022, “History of Science and History of the Earth in the Anthropocene”, in Physis 57: 171-188.
  • 2022, “Hydrogeological Knowledge from Below: Water Expertise as a Republican Common in Early Modern Venice”, in "Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte: History of Science and Humanities" 45/4: 538-560, journal special issue on "Knowledge from Below: From Historical to Political Epistemology", ed. by Gerardo Ienna and Charles Wolfe.
  • 2022, “Geopraxis: A Concept for the Anthropocene”, in "Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas" 11/22: 10:1-10:52.
  • 2023, “Inseln der Rousseau-Verehrung oder: Rousseau-Inseln zwischen Ermenonville, Wörlitz, Berlin und Arkadia als Denkmäler eines Natürlichkeitskults?”, in: Jana Kittelmann, Michael Niedermeier, Andrea Thiele (eds.): "Über Gärten im Gespräch. Wechselwirkungen zwischen Landschaftsgärten des 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts in Mittel- und Ostmitteleuropa", Halle, pp. 55-80.
  • 2019, “‘Gl’effetti della natura tua maestra’. Zu den Begriffen ‘Natur‘ und ‘Natürlichkeit’ in der Bildenden Kunst und Kunsttheorie vor 1800”, in Vera Grund, Claire Genewein and Hans Georg Nicklaus (eds.) Naturalezza / Simplicité. Natürlichkeit im Musiktheater, Bielefeld, pp. 223-304.
  • 2017, “Historic Gardens and Climate Change. Conclusions and Perspectives”, in: Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch, Zbigniew Kobyliński and Louis Daniel Nebelsick (eds.) "Archaeologica Hereditas. Preventive Conservation of the Human Environment 6. Architecture as Part of the Landscape" [Monographs of the Institute of Archeology of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University. Volume published in cooperation with the Institute of Art History of the University of Warszaw, 10], Warsaw, pp. 163-76.
  • 2022, “Transformation and Persistence of the Basin-Valley of Mexico in the 16th and 17th Centuries”, in "Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas" 11/22: 14:1-14:35.
  • 2023, “Non Human, too Non Human: Some concerns about ecocide”, "Environmental Politics", special issue on ‘The Politics of Ecocide’.
  • 2023, “Uccidere la casa? Sulle problematiche implicazioni dell'ecocidio”, Jura Gentium.
  • 2023, “Praxis and counter-finality: beyond Sartre on institutions,” in "Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Institution of Subjects", CRMEP, Kingston, pp. 101-117.
  • 2023, with Buongiorno Federica, “Environment,” "Handbook of the Anthropocene: Humans between Heritage and Future", ed. by Nathanael Wallenhorst & Christoph Wulf, Springer.
  • 2022, “Un problema di ‘natura’ politica,” Zapruder, 58, pp. 14-28.
  • 2022, “Law Is Other Wor(l)ds” In: "The Case for Reduction", ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Jakob Schillinger, Cultural Inquiry, 25, Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, pp. 227-250.
  • 2022, with Di Ronco Anna, “Harm to knowledge: Criminalising environmental movements speaking up against megaprojects”. In: Pali B; Forsyth M; Tepper F. "The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Restorative Justice", pp. 421-447, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • 2020, “The Struggle for Law: legal strategies, environmental struggles and climate actions in Italy”, "Oñati Socio-Legal Series", 10, 4, 932-954.
  • 2023, “An Archipelago of Ecological Care: Venice, Its Lagoon, and Contemporary Art”, in "Lagoonscapes", 3/2. 
  • 2023, “Everyone Talks About Water in Venice”, in D. Roelstraete (ed.), "Everybody Talks About the Weather", Milan: Progetto Prada Arte, pp. 198-201. 
  • 2022, “Acque and Mud: Stratification as a Metaphor of Time (Maria Morganti)”, in (eds.), C. Baldacci, S. Bassi, L. De Capitani, P.D. Omodeo, "Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide", wetlands, pp. 55-58. 
  • 2022, "Re-Enacting Ecosystems: Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s Environmental Storytelling in Virtual and Augmented Reality", in "Piano B. Arti E Culture Visive", 6(1), pp. 67-86. 
  • 2023, "Building Common Ground: Ecological Art Practices and Human-Nonhuman Knowledges", Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari.
  • 2023, “Primo Levi and the Terrestrial Condition”, Enthymema 33.
  • 2022, “Ice Core Verticality. The Eloquence of Ice and the Visual Construction of Deep Time”, "Elephant & Castle. Laboratorio dell’immaginario", n. 28 - "Ecological Sensitivity. Media Techno-aesthetics of the Environmental Crisis" (with Valeria Burgio).
  • 2022, “The Anthropocene and the Aesthetics of Planetary Abstraction”, in Metzner-Szigeth, Andreas (ed.), "On the Interplay of Images, Imaginaries and Imagination in Science Communication", Florence: Olschki
  • 2021, “Resisting the Tourist Gaze. Art Activism Against Cruise Ship Extractivism in the Venice Lagoon”, "Lagoonscapes. The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities", 1 (1).
  • “River, Giant, and Hubris: A Note on Vergil, Aeneid 8.330-3”, "Classical Quarterly" (accepted for publication).
  • 2023, "Wolves of Rome: The Lupercalia from Roman and Comparative Perspectives" (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin), 336 pages.
  • 2022, “The Festival of the Lupercalia as a Vehicle of Cultural Memory in the Roman Republic”, chapter in M.T. Dinter and C. Guérin (eds.) "Cultural Memory in Republican and Augustan Rome", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 281-93.
  • 2022, "The Mighty Streams: Coping with Rivers in the Ancient World", "Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History" 14 (online journal).
  • 2022, “Routes”, chapter in D. Duncan and J. Burns (eds.) "Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook", Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 251-60 (with Peter Campbell).
  • 2021, "神話の紡がれかた (Shinwa no tsumugarekata)", “Greek and Roman Mythology”, chapter in Y. Kasai and V. Cazzato (eds.) "古典の挑戦  (Koten no Chōsen) Challenges in Classics", Chisen Shokan, Tokyo, 259-84.
  • 2021, “The Indo-European Daughter of the Sun: Greek Helen, Vedic Saranyu and Slavic Morana”, "Nouvelle Mythologie Comparée" 6 (online journal), (with Maria M. Glavan).
Acqua alta in Venice, by Caterina Borsato
Lagoon of Venice seen from Lazzaretto Nuovo, by Corinna Guerra
Bormida river leaving the former ACNA chemical complex in Cengio, photo by Emiliano Guaraldo