Episode 22: Venetian Ecologies: Acqua Alta, Climate Change, and Pollution


Posted Date: April 1, 2021

painting of bridge over water with factories in distance
Camille Pissarro, The Great Bridge, Rouen (Le Grand Pont, Rouen), 1896. Carnegie Museum of Art

Episode Description: In this episode, LAC member Merve Tabur has a conversation with Dr. Daniel Finch-Race on the impact of climate change on Venice and the mitigation efforts led by the government, the NGOs, and the local community. Describing life in Venice during the November 2019 flood, Dr. Finch-Race discusses the various coping strategies adopted by the city’s inhabitants and comments on how the pandemic has affected pollution levels in Venice. Dr. Finch-Race also examines the similarities and differences between our contemporary affective responses to environmental destruction and representations of environmental issues in late eighteenth-century French and Italian art and literature.

 

Guest Biography

Dr. Daniel Finch-RaceDr Daniel Finch-Race FHEA is a research fellow in the Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, following posts in Southampton, Durham, Edinburgh, and Bristol. He blends the environmental and medical humanities to address pollution in modern French and Italian culture. His solo publications include articles in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment and Romance Studies, as well as an issue of Nineteenth-Century Contexts (“Poetics of Place,” 2019). As co-editor, he worked with Jeff Barda on Textures (Peter Lang, 2015), with Stephanie Posthumus on French Ecocriticism (Peter Lang, 2017), with Julien Weber on issues of Dix-Neuf and L’Esprit créateur (“Ecopoetics,” 2015; “French Ecocriticism,” 2017), and with Valentina Gosetti on a double issue of Dix-Neuf (“Ecoregions,” 2019). He co-founded the special interest group for early career academics within the University Council of Modern Languages.

 

Project Title: “A Venetian Perspective on the Cultural Stakes of the Climate Crisis”

Project Description

painting of bathers at river
Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières, 1884. National Gallery of Art, London

Arising from the research cluster in environmental humanities within the Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, this discussion will revolve around environmental injustices linked to the actions of certain technologically privileged groups of humans. COVID-19 is symptomatic of problems at the intersection of ecology, health, politics, and race that need to be approached from diverse perspectives to ensure comprehensive awareness of how distinctive communities have been affected to different extents, including more-than-human ones. In these difficult circumstances, efforts to “build back better” must involve challenging unfair systems to contribute to a just transition—a key aspect will be valorizing lived experiences across space and time in the name of solidarity and parity. With a view to honing ways of sharing ideas and removing impediments to climate action, it is timely to reflect closely on the emotional and physical coordinates of narratives of the world across centuries of media. Such a process holds the promise to increase the nuance of debates and policies geared toward an equitable future for our planet.

 

Resources

  • Maura Coughlin and Emily Gephart, “Introduction,” in Maura Coughlin and Emily Gephart (eds), Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture (New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 1–12 [open access]
  • Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, “Material Ecocriticism: Materiality, Agency, and Models of Narrativity,” Ecozon@, vol. 3, no. 1, 2012, pp. 75–91 [open access]
  • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC,” YouTube, 5 December 2018, https://youtu.be/rVjp3TO_juI
  • Andrew Jameton, “Outline of the Ethical Implications of Earth’s Limits for Health Care,” Journal of Medical Humanities, vol. 23, no. 1, 2002, pp. 43–59 [open access]
  • Anna Souter, “Dirty Pretty Things: Air Pollution in Art from JMW Turner to Today,” The Guardian, 28 October 2020, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/28/jmw-turner-air-pollution-in-art-rain-steam-and-speed

Artistic & Literary Reflections