Margins as laboratories of urban planning -- Enclosures as topographies of vision -- Windows as sites of visual disturbance -- Walls as boundaries of the night.
Summary:
"The Jewish Ghetto and the Visual Imagination of Early Modern Venice is not a diachronic study of the ghetto's architectural development or microhistory of the masons who erected its tenements. Instead, this is a book about how the built landscape makes, in the words of W.J.T. Mitchell, "seeing show itself." I focus on everyday architectural elements in order to call attention to the vernacular vision of early modern Venice. I am interested in the exchange of gazes framed by ghetto architecture that expose how visuality shapes sociality. That is, I am interested in ways of seeing windows, walls, and gates that look through them to see how they actively inform society. Through a dissection of the ghetto's architectural anatomy, I parse its constituent elements to interrogate seeing as a mediator of urban experience. I analyze the details of construction and design to deconstruct how the ghetto's fenestration patterns, building heights, and enclosure walls stimulate the senses of space and engage lines of sight"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.