Generating New Knowledge in Art History and Material Culture with Technology. Case Studies from the Field and the Classroom

Abstract

This talk will present experimental projects that integrate a variety of technologies (GPR, laser scanning, 3D modeling, animations and color projection) that provide new ways of understanding and interpreting medieval material culture. The presentation focuses on how interdisciplinary collaborations in research and teaching can involve students and the public in the history of things, places, and spaces. Bruzelius is a founder of the Wired! Lab at Duke, a digital laboratory for generating visualizations of historical materials and integrating a range of technologies into traditional courses in the history of art and material culture, as well as Visualizing Venice, an international collaboration that interrogates change and time in the historic center of Venice.

Bio

Caroline Bruzelius is a digital humanist with scholarly expertise in medieval architecture, urbanism, and sculpture. She has written extensively on religious architecture of the Middle Ages in France and Italy, publishing books and articles on French Gothic architecture (St.-Denis and Notre-Dame in Paris, for example) and on medieval South Italy. Her most recent book (2014), Preaching, Building and Burying. Friars in the Medieval City (Yale University Press), focuses on how the religious practices introduced by the Franciscans and Dominicans (outdoor preaching, visiting laymen in homes, and burying townspeople in convents) transformed cities.

Bruzelius is presently working on two new book projects: “The Cathedral and the City,” a study of the urban and financial implications of cathedral building, and another volume on the role of architecture in the creation of state identity in the medieval Kingdom of Sicily.

Bruzelius is a leader in Digital Art History, exploring how digital technologies communicate narratives about art and the built environment in teaching, museums, and in research. She is a founding member of the "Wired!" group at Duke University, a group that integrates visualization technologies with teaching, engaging undergraduate and graduate students in multi-year research initiatives. She is also a founder of the two international and interdisciplinary collaborations, Visualizing Venice and the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database.

From 1994 to 1998 Bruzelius was Director of the American Academy in Rome. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Medieval Academy of America, the Society of Antiquaries (London), and has received numerous other awards in the United States and abroad.