Course description
In keeping with the aims of the UNESCO Chair on Water Heritage and Sustainable Development and the approach to Environmental Humanities of The NEW INSTITUTE CENTRE for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, this course introduces students to the concepts of sustainability, heritage, and water from the transdisciplinary perspective of historical geoanthropology. Geoanthropology – the emergent field informing the research of the Max Planck Partner Group ‘The Water City’ in Venice in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena – studies the dynamic interrelations between nature and society by drawing on various established and emerging fields, such as hydrosociology, political epistemology, and Earth system science. The course integrates this innovative theoretical approach with multiple historical case studies centered around Venice and its lagoon.

The theoretical dimension of the course consists in repositioning the concepts of sustainability, heritage, and water from the perspective of theoretical and environmental humanities. First, the course considers sustainability within the Anthropocene paradigm, according to which humans are situated agents in a destabilised planetary ecosystem. This paradigm emphasises that a reorientation towards sustainable existence must involve considerations of the social and political functions of science, production, and technology. Second, building on these premises, the course approaches heritage—the sedimentation of material, cultural, and epistemic flows—from the perspective of critical biopolitics, which examines the material conditions of the political categories related to the preservation of life. The decision of which sedimentations are worth preserving for current and future generations involves answering underlying biopolitical and ideological questions: Which kind of life is considered valuable and worth saving? What is the role of culture and its dynamics (including habits, values, ideals, esthetics) in shaping ecosystems? Finally, the course approaches water and its circulation as a key element in global metabolic networks. From the perspective of hydro-sociology, water emerges as both a material resource vital to, for example, sustenance and transportation, as well as a cultural sign with historical meanings.

As the history of science is particularly well placed to study the links between the past (represented by history) and the future (represented by science and technology), the analysis of historical case studies of the Venetian Republic from a geoanthropological perspective provides ideal grounds for the application of the theoretical framework. Each of the course’s three main sections will be accompanied by examples from Venice’s rich history of water management to further explore the topics discussed. First, to consider how decision-making affects future generations, the course will look at the wide-scale planning and actions of the Republic of Venice for the preservation of the lagoon. Examples include Cornaro and Sabbadino’s sixteenth-century dispute over the urban expansion of Venice, historical projects for diverging rivers outside the lagoon, and the modern-day MOSE enterprise. Second, the role of culture dynamics in shaping the ecosystems will be discussed through a series of small-scale land reclamation and preservation endeavors in the Venetian mainland, such as river cleaning of sediments, construction of water drainage canals, and rice growing. Finally, the material and cultural value of water will be examined in relation to the Veneto villa by considering its physical role in water management and the hydro-cultural ideals expressed in its fresco programs.

Learning Outcomes
The course will provide students with a conceptual framework and vocabulary in line with the values and goals set in the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The students will be able to evaluate and discuss issues of sustainability from an Earth System Science perspective while developing local cultural and historical sensibility. The course will foster the capacity to understand questions of heritage in relation to broader concerns about the preservation of distinct forms of life. The students will learn to identify global connectivity on the basis of a fundamental resource—water. The course will develop a situated understanding of the cultural and scientific history of Venice in view of the ecological challenges faced by the Water City within the lagoon and in its mainland territories. In general terms, the students will be introduced to the educational, scientific, and cultural mission of UNESCO and the Chair for Water Heritage and Sustainable Development.

Syllabus

PART 1 – Sustainability in the Anthropocene (Weeks 1–4)
This part of the course repositions the concept of sustainability within the Anthropocene paradigm. In addition to providing a basic introduction to the Anthropocene scholarship, the section will emphasise the multiple environmental grammars in modernity and the significance of understanding science, production, and technology as political phenomena whose function within the Earth system requires significant reinterpretation.
In addition, the students will be introduced to wide scale concerns of the historic Venetian Republic regarding the preservation and protection of the lagoon and the thriving city within it; we will discuss the scientific solutions proposed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries for the defense and preservation of the lagoon, including the projects for the divergence of the rivers of the mainland, and evaluate their cultural, social, and political implications.
EXCURSION: This section will involve a visit to the MOSE headquarters and visitors’ centre at the Giardino Thetis in Venice’s Arsenale.

PART 2 – Biopolitics and Heritage (Weeks 5–8)
In the second part of the course, heritage will be presented as a sedimentation of material, cultural, and epistemic flows. The session will highlight that the preservation of heritage is not incidental and often follows established patterns of valuation and discrimination. For instance, in Venice, heritage preservation is often centered around the “jewels” of the city, which are the legacy of the merchant class ruling the city. Particularly within the Anthropocene paradigm, the preservation of heritage must be understood in relation to biopolitics: what is worthy of preservation depends on the kind of life that is considered worth saving. To this end, students will be introduced to some basic literature on critical biopolitics.

The historical case studies discussed in this section will concentrate on small-scale challenges of water management in the Venetian mainland: river cleaning and the digging of sediments, construction of water drainage canals, rice growing, and watermill maintenance. We will investigate the nature of the conflicts that typically arose with such endeavors, and the factors that influenced decision-making in favor of one party or another.
GUEST SPEAKER: An established international scholar working in the fields of heritage, biopolitics, and/or global metabolism will be invited to give a guest lecture to the students.

PART 3 – Water in Global Metabolisms (Weeks 9–12)
The Anthropocene paradigm emphasises the interconnectedness of locations, processes, and populations. Water is a key material and symbolic connector whose presence is necessary for biological survival, economic transportation, and stable climate patterns. By introducing students to the combined positions of hydro-sociology and socio-hydrology, this part of the course emphasises that water is a historical-material object with political implications—and with possibilities for political transformations that could ensure an equitable and sustainable earth-system.
The historical inquiry in this part delves into the realm of the Veneto villa, to the role water plays inside it, and in its environment, also intended in the wider scale of the politics of the Republic. It will explore the villa’s physical traits as a control centre for its surrounding agricultural landscape and investigate the hydrological ideals guiding villa life through the observation of the symbolism of the villas’ decorative fresco programs.
EXCURSION: The course will end with a visit to a Veneto villa of choice for an applied study of the villa’s physical water-related mechanisms and their conceptual application in the villa’s fresco program. Depending on the budget and availability of the villas, it is possible to consider either a half-day excursion or a full-day trip, planned either for the class alone or for all the students participating in the same semester. Optional visits include on or more sites in the Brenta-Padua area (Villa Malcontenta in Mira, Villa Pisani in Strà, and the Odeo Cornaro in Padua), the south of the Veneto region (the Badoer and Grimani Molin villas at Fratta Polesine, Parco di Valsanzibio in the Colli Euganei), or the Treviso province (Villa Barbaro at Maser, Villa Emo at Fanzolo, the Villa-Castello of Roncade).

Teaching and evaluation methods
20% – participation
30% – project presentation
50% – final project

In addition to in-class participation (20%), students will develop and present their project idea (30%) by the middle of the course. The final project (50%), such as a research essay, will be delivered after the lecture period.

For the project, each student will be required to select a geographical area of interest worldwide in which water heritage plays a central role, such as an urban center, a region, lake, or river. Students will be able to choose from a list proposed by the professor or suggest their own case studies. Each student will have to examine the case by applying the terms and frameworks acquired throughout the course, analysing the past and present environmental challenges as well as possibilities for resolution, with comparative references to the Venetian case.

Bibliography and recommended reading
Ackerman, J. S., Palladio’s Villas, Institute of Fine Arts J. J. Augustin, 1967.
Cristina Baldacci, Shaul Bassi, Lucio De Capitani and Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide. Venice: Wetlands, 2022.
Campbell, Timothy, and Adam Sitze. Biopolitics: A Reader. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2013. (Selected chapters)
Ciriacono, Salvatore. Building on Water: Venice, Holland and the Construction of the European Landscape in Early Modern Times, Berghahn Books, 2006. “Chapter 2: Irrigation and Land Drainage in the Venetian Republic during the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 62-100; “Chapter 3: Hydraulics in the Venetian Republic: Technicians and Scientists from the Early Fifteenth Century to the Second Scientific Revolution,” 101–148.
Cosgrove, Denis. “Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice”, Imago Mundi, 44 (1992). 65–89 (here 65–75).
Fischer, Sören. “The Allegorical Landscape. Alvise Cornaro and His Self-Promotion by the Landscape Paintings in the Odeo Cornaro in Padua”, Kunstgeschichte. Open Peer Reviewed Journal 2013: 1–11.
Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste. “Losing the Earth Knowingly: Six Environmental Grammars around 1800.” The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. Routledge, 2015. 70–83.
Hornborg, Alf. “The Political Ecology of the Technocene: Uncovering Ecologically Unequal Exchange in the World-System.” The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. Routledge, 2015. 57–69.
Malm, Andreas. “The Origins of Fossil Capital: From Water to Steam in the British Cotton Industry.”
Historical Materialism 21.1 (2013): 15–68.
Omodeo, Pietro Daniel, and Sebastiano Trevisani. “Historical Geoanthropology in Venice.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 11.22 (2022).
Shai, Meital. The Cosmos at Home. The Fresco Cycle of Villa Grimani Molin at Fratta Polesine, Zamorani, 2019. “Chapter 1.1: Cartography and the Santa Agricoltura”, 49–64; “Chapter 2.3: The Local Microcosm of Villa Badoer and Villa Grimani Molin”, 158–164.
Wittfogel, Karl A., and G. L. Ulmen. “Geopolitics, Geographical Materialism and Marxism.” Antipode 17.1 (1985): 21–71.
Wolfe, Cary. Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame. University of Chicago Press, 2019. (Selected chapters)
Yusoff, Kathryn. “Biopolitical Economies and the Political Aesthetics of Climate Change.” Theory, Culture & Society 27.2-3 (2010): 73–99.

Last updated: January 29, 2025