"I will continue dissertation research on the Romanization of southern Italy using Larinum as a case study. This site, a non-Roman capital in the fourth and third centuries BCE, was incorporated into the Roman state in the first century BCE. In order to create a comprehensive picture of cultural change at this site, I will assemble the ancient sources and extant remains pertaining to Larinum from the fourth century BCE to the first century CE. I will conduct library research in Rome, and I will examine the settlement patterns around Larinum, the monuments and inscriptions at the site, and the unpublished votive and funerary artifacts in storerooms at Larino, Isernia, and Campobasso. I will explore how these remains illustrate the continuity and change of cultural elements. My unique study will provide valuable new information about processes of cultural change at this site before and after Roman conquest."
Current
Rome Prize Fellows and Projects
The American Academy in Rome awards the Rome Prize to a select group of artists and scholars, after an application process that begins in the fall of each year. The winners, announced in the spring, are invited to Rome to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation. The 2011-12 Rome Prize winners are listed here with a brief project summary in their own words.
To download the brochure from the Rome Prize Ceremony held in New York on 13 April, 2011, announcing the 2011-2012 Rome Prize winners click here.
Ancient Studies
Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, University of Pennsylvania
“This project examines the topographical evolution of Rome's Subura district during the first millennium A.D. Ancient literary accounts describe a persistent elite occupation on the upper slopes of the city's eastern hills, but the valley between them is described as a socially marginalized, crowded residential and commercial area. Since the archaeology of the urban lower class has rarely been of great interest to scholars of Rome, we have an abridged reconstruction of the city's historical topography and an incomplete understanding of how the lower classes actually lived. My dissertation fills this gap, as it is the first systematic study of the area. In analyzing the district over the longue durée, its shifting character and fabric can be tied to the drastic social and religious changes that took place during the first millennium.”
Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame
“I intend to prepare a study of Prosper of Aquitaine's (fifth century) poetical synthesis of Augustine's thought accompanied by the first critical edition of the text, an English translation, and commentary. The libraries of Rome contain one of the richest collections of manuscripts containing the writings of Prosper. I would use my time at the Academy to study not only the text of Prosper, but the aesthetic and social dimension of the physical book.”
Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, Skidmore College
“I will use this fellowship to complete my book project on Apollonius' Argonautica. The date of this unique and influential epic has been a source of controversy for over a century. My research, however, introduces a new and more objective approach to the question. By using the references to astronomical phenomena in the epic with calculations verified by colleagues in astronomy and by astronomical software, I have been able to date the poem to a specific/significant year during the Ptolemaic period. The astronomical references in books 1 and 2 allude, I submit, to the year 238BCE, the year in which Ptolemy III celebrated his Jubilee and introduced a calendar reform, the first known calendar based on the solar year. My findings challenge the prevailing view that Apollonius' Argonautica was written sometime between 270BCE and 240BCE, during the reign Ptolemy II (284-246BCE).”
Departments of Religious Studies and Classics, Brown University
“My dissertation evaluates entrepreneurial religion at Rome during what appears to be its greatest efflorescence, from approximately the mid-first century BCE through the height of imperial expansion. The exchange of religious expertise for financial and symbolic capital constitutes a discrete phenomenon that warrants careful theorization. Entrepreneurs did not enjoy legitimacy through inherited channels and licit mechanisms, but purveyed novel or otherwise inaccessible practices to consumers with finite reasons for seeking them out. Though many of these practices comprise categories like magic, astrology, and mystery cults, I offer an analysis of specialist activity that cuts across its assorted permutations. Unlike publications that resort to dualisms between practical and 'spiritual' aspects of religion to explain their appeal, my approach situates the practices and strategies of entrepreneurs, as well as the conditions for their enthusiastic reception, in the city's material circumstances during this period.”
Architecture
Principal, Studio Co
Instructor, University of Kentucky College of Design
“I will conduct a forensic analysis the Baroque, not as a historical style, but as a suite of design strategies and effects. I will empirically collect evidence in the field: identifying spatial effects, tracing their means of production, documenting the pressures they exert bodies and perception, and analyzing the programs they suggest and the events they activate. Feeding research into praxis, I will speculate on ways of adapting these strategies and techniques to a contemporary architectural context. The manifestation of this research as design will include the production of speculative drawings and architectural objects.”
Principal, EASTON + COMBS, New York, NY
Clinical Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
“The proposal begins with an analytical approach to the structural systems and material innovations found in Nervi's applications of reinforced concrete, specifically thin shell systems with novel structural performance and environmental effects. The case studies will focus on the lineage of material innovation from classical to modern times. The research will seek to construct a platform for design speculation incorporating emerging material innovations and computational strategies for managing structural performance, material organization and environmental effects. The examinations of the innovations of Nervi will depend on extensive site visitations in Rome and throughout Italy. It is through this context of historical and incremental innovation in building culture that this project will explore alternative futures with the use of advanced computational strategies as well as physical material research that focus on recent breakthroughs in performance enhancement, fabric reinforcement and environmental performance of emerging material methodologies of concrete and cast material systems.”
Design
Theater Artist, Brooklyn, NY
Creative Director/Founder, W/ —— Project Space, New York, NY
“My proposal for the Rome prize is to explore the design of constraints as a curatorial method to create new platforms for the making and experiencing of contemporary art. By replacing the formalized constraints of art institutions with an invented set of rules in alternative spaces I will investigate how designing limitations can create ephemeral yet potent experiences with art. There are 5 phases: (1) the mapping and identification of environments which possess amplified spatial and temporal qualities (2) Establishing a set of parameters/constraints (3) collaboration with artists (4) activation and installation of work in spaces (5) documentation of the temporary work and installations in publication format.”
Historic Preservation and Conservation
Principal, Pantel, del Cueto & Associates, San Juan, Puerto Rico
“Returning to Rome to live after 28 years, I will compile and analyze over two decades of pioneer conservation projects in the Spanish Caribbean, to be used to create a viable model for other regional areas to understand and conserve their local technologies. These past investigations will be complemented and enriched by my study of contemporary Italian architectural conservation/preservation practices, which in essence, deal with similar building techniques and traditional construction materials, since Roman buildings constituted the basis for Spanish-Colonial Caribbean construction technologies. My work at the Academy will contribute to a proposed publication designed to be a valuable tool to professionals, trades people and students dealing with 16th - 20th century buildings in our area of the West Indies. Rubble-masonry, wood, brick, stone and concrete technologies will be presented through historic structures in the region. The publication will provide not only specific research topics for the student, but more importantly, systematic approaches and processes in the understanding of the built environment and successful interventions into historic constructions.”
Executive Director, Intermuseum Conservation Association, Cleveland, Ohio
“I will investigate Renaissance and Baroque paintings in and around Rome that were destination sites for artists and writers in the 18-19th c. to determine how they may have physically changed over time with evolving visual alterations. I intend to study published and unpublished travel journals, manuscript texts from the same periods, and other documents with evaluations and interpretations of these paintings. I will research how the 18-19th c. often mistaken interpretations, written perceptions, and art historical analysis of these works were compromised by the context of their period cultural and aesthetic values and why these changed works of art prompted new aesthetics for painters. This research will reveal rich and important material for a discourse on period perceptions of altered physical objects as cultural icons and commodity and may serve as a model for interpreting how desires and perspectives influence visual culture interpretation to suit each period's needs.”
Landscape Architecture
Founder, WEATHERS / Sean Lally, LLC, Chicago, IL
Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago
“If we were to map our cities today, showing not the walls and envelopes, but rather the artificially conditioned, climate-controlled (primarily interior) spaces versus the un-conditioned (exterior) context, we would see as striking a dichotomy of figure-ground as we see in Nolli's eighteenth-century map. When we look at the city not as public versus private space, but as conditioned versus unconditioned space, the surfaces and geometries of architecture are often coincident with and responsible for fortifying these boundaries. Yet as cities vent their infrastructural exhaust, buildings release energy dumps from mechanical systems, and air conditioning spills from commercial spaces onto streets and plazas, it is apparent that this dichotomy is less clear, requiring a gradient reading and mapping of these spaces so they can become design initiatives. These materials can transcend simply being byproducts and spills and instead become initiatives for our public spaces throughout the twelve months.”
“Landscape Architects provide a fundamental design and coordination role in the transformative process of land reclamation. While mined terrains are most commonly thought of as environmental problems, they raise a host of social, economic and legal issues. Quarries have played a key role in the establishment of settlements, and are a source of commercial trade, whether limestone (for cement and other products), uranium, or marble, among many other elements. For the Roman (Italian) culture, the Carrara quarries hundreds of miles north of Rome come to mind. But just east of the city, several significant sites exist which deserve to be studied for their potential transformation from a productive landscape of extraction to a productive landscape of extraction and replenishment. One of those sites, the Guidonia quarry, will serve as the focus of my study.”
Literature
Chair, Department of Creative Writing and Literature, Santa Fe University of Art and Design
“My project for this coming year is twofold. First, I'll be completing work on my second collection of poems, Every Last Thing. Many of the pieces in this manuscript focus on icons of Americana, and meditate on the temporality and insularity of joy, our means of navigating between bliss and grief, and the ability and failure of language to convey these extremities of emotion. In addition, I'll be developing a book-length series of lyric essays, many of which employ Japanese Haikus as vehicles for meditation on far-flung topics culled from history, art, poetry, and personal narrative.”
Writer, Jamaica Plain, MA
“This is a historical novel about 29-year-old Walt Whitman's experiences with his 15-year-old brother, Jeff, in New Orleans in 1848. It explores the personal and artistic revelations that shaped the pre-Leaves of Grass Whitman when he worked as a reporter for the New Orleans Daily Crescent.”
Medieval Studies
Assistant Professor, Department of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology, University of North Texas
“The local repertoire of medieval plainsong known as Old Roman Chant includes thirty-six ‘historiae’ in honor of martyrs and popes buried in the Eternal City. These sets of antiphons and responsories were integral to the growth of local relic cults and provided aural counterparts to the literary and pictorial Lives (vitae) of their holy subjects. My project will culminate in a critical edition of the Roman historiae and a related monograph that traces their development from the eighth to the thirteenth century. The latter will analyze the hagiographic sources of their texts, the style of their melodies, and the construction and decoration of burial churches for their saints. In so doing, it will not only illuminate a rich yet understudied musical repertoire but also reveal how the historiae both complemented and shaped the visual programs of the churches in which they were sung.”
Assistant Professor, Department of History, The Catholic University of America
“I plan to complete my book entitled Charlemagne's Practice of Empire. The book reconsiders how Charlemagne and his men exercised their power, arguing that royal authority was far more flexible, ad hoc, and tolerant of diversity than scholars have previously recognized. I examine the nature of Charlemagne's exercise of power in three thematic sections, addressing tools of control and coercion, innovations and the pace of change, and the balancing of standardization and diversity. Rather than simply imposing Frankish control on conquered regions, Charlemagne and his men sought to use them as a testing ground for techniques of rulership later imported back to Francia. The process of learning from conquered regions is particularly clear in the Kingdom of Italy. It is this analysis of how the conquest of Italy changed Charlemagne's rulership which I hope to write in Rome.”
Department of Art History, Rutgers University
"My project focuses on the fifth-century Orthodox Baptistery in Ravenna. Through consideration of the Baptistery's imagery and its exceptional variety of media, I investigate how images, inscriptions, materials, and liturgical performance acted in dialogue with one another and together helped enhanced the initiate's "rebirth" and new found union with a Christian God. The Baptistery's rich combination of imagery, lavish materials, and prominent inscriptions reveals the sophisticated and compelling ways in which ecclesiastical patrons generated new members for an increasingly powerful Church and heightened the moment of conversion. Through study of this important monument, therefore, I explore issues of materiality, text-and-image relationships, liturgical experience, and episcopal power in fifth-century Italy. In so doing, I hope to offer new and more nuanced insights into the dynamic interaction between images, materials, and viewers within the Baptistery itself and, by extension, the sacred spaces of early medieval Italy."
Modern Italian Studies
Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian, University of Texas at Austin
“My project examines the documentary film production in Italy in the late 1940s and 1950s about modernization, including programs of reconstruction and welfare, the establishment of a democratic regime, industrialization of rural areas and the spread of mass production, urbanization, and economic development of the Southern regions. I investigate the ways in which documentary films educated Italian viewers to the practices of a democratic, capitalist, and welfare society, while showcasing Italy's recovery and transition from Fascism to Democracy to the international audiences of Western Europe and the United States.”
Assistant Professor of Musicology, School of Music, Theatre and Dance, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
“Opera dominated nineteenth-century Italy, but that simplistic understanding is complicated when considering the contemporaneous reception of Beethoven. Italians knew and performed his instrumental music, but Beethoven's Italian reception differs from his status as the icon of instrumental music in northern Europe. Italian critics considered Beethoven an opera composer, which is problematic considering he wrote only one unsuccessful opera, Fidelio (1804-14), that was not fully staged in Italy until the 1880s. This Italian misreading of Beethoven can be understood in the context of the crisis of opera: at the same time the Western operatic canon was being ossified, critics lamented the static and provincial nature of the genre and were searching for new possibilities to reinvigorate Italian opera, including the influence of German instrumental music. Understanding Beethoven in Italy provides a more nuanced view of both by rethinking facile notions such as Carl Dahlhaus's ‘twin cultures’ dichotomy.”
Department of the History of Art, University of California, Berkeley
“In 1813, the Académie de France à Rome, an institution that since 1666 had welcomed elite French artists to Rome to complete their education through immersion in the Antique, faced being dismantled permanently. The state of history painting had been assessed, and Ancient History—the specialty of these young Academic painters in Rome—had lost out to present-day Napoleonic warfare as the subject worthiest of representation. My dissertation project, Revolutionizing the Antique: French Artists and Artistic Community in Napoleonic Rome, 1803-1819, investigates the solutions young painters like Ingres, Blondel, Boisselier, and Géricault invented in Rome to sustain the Antique—the only art they had been trained to reproduce—as an imperative for history painting. My work casts a dynamic, shifting, uniquely Roman Antique as a lens through which to view the development of French history painting during this period. It challenges traditional narratives of Academic instruction and hierarchies, revealing the Roman Académie as a location of dissent and invention as opposed to a sedate training ground for an ever-rigidifying style.”
Musical Composition
Harold W. Dodds Honorific Doctoral Fellow, Princeton University
“My main project last year was Clunker Concerto, a percussion quartet concerto for junk car and orchestra, commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra. In the piece, a mock car is broken down into its constituent parts, revealing a diverse arsenal of unusual and surprisingly robust “junk” instruments. Rather than use the junk primarily as percussive objects (that is, as things that make loud sounds when you hit them), I treated them as I treated the orchestral instruments: as complex instruments with their own unique timbres and idiosyncratic performance techniques. (For example, I developed bowing/fingering techniques that turned fenders and hubcaps into fully chromatic instruments.) By focusing on these nuances of the junk, I found many ways to organically blend them with the orchestra, expanding the latter’s sound palette in rich, other-worldly, and wacky ways. In Rome, I will substantially expand and revise the piece in preparation for its studio recording in 2012, and perhaps, make a small chamber version of it with Roman junk. I will also complete several commissions for shorter chamber and solo works.”
Associate Professor of Music, University of California, San Diego
“I will devote the residency fellowship to completing 2 compositions: a sextet co-commissioned by Southwest Chamber Music and Cicada Chamber Players, and a Chamber Concerto for 15-20 players commissioned by the Callithumpian Consort. My approach to composition has been driven by a few central concepts, including a technique that I call ‘One-Note-Polyphony’, and my long-standing fascination with the heterophonic music of Inner Mongolia. These two projects offer me the ideal instrumental forces to further explore my ideas.”
Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
Department of History, Stanford University
Associate Professor, Department of History, Oakland University
“This project examines the religious and intellectual contexts of polemical writings against Aristotle and his followers during the Scientific Revolution, by examining the legacy of Renaissance Italian natural philosophy. The rejection of Aristotelianism is widely considered to have been concomitant to the development of modern science. Its rejection had significant ramifications for Christianity, which had for centuries used Aristotelian concepts in its theology. To bolster their positions, proponents of new sciences used a variety of techniques to contend that Renaissance Italian natural philosophy was impious, irreligious, or even atheistic. Those who argued for alternatives to traditional natural philosophy tried to demonstrate its lack of orthodoxy by using historical, rhetorical, and philosophical arguments, many of which had origins in controversies of the Italian Renaissance.”
Visual Arts
“My plan is to create new paintings in Rome, under the influence of great Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance painting, sculpture and architecture. I would like to give particular attention to the narrative and spatial arrangement of multi-paneled frescoes and paintings situated in churches and museums, seeking out the recurring themes of shifting Time and evolving symbolism, particularly in cycles of birth, death and renewal.”
Visiting Faculty, Sculpture Department, Yale University
“I am intrigued by the history and mystery of the Pantheon. Through research and ritual, I will revisit its mysterious origins. I plan to record the daily shifting of light through the giant occulus- a hole to the sky- observing this movement that has remained the same since ancient times. I will make a book depicting my observations - a means of translating the past to the present - using a pinhole camera as well as drawings and painting.”
“Using video as a means to combine the mediums of performance, poetry, and drawing, I plan to write, film, and edit a short film (15-20 minutes) that examines pulmonary tuberculosis as dominant romantic metaphor and as a deadly reality. By focusing on the literary endeavors of poets both real and fictional in 18th and 19th century Rome, this film also undertakes a parallel exploration of Rome as paradoxical site of climactic cure for illness, as well as the crumbling evidence of a diseased culture.”
Artist, New York, NY
“I will start my research on the second floor of the Museo Nazionale Romano-Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, paying special attention to the restored frescos of Livia's dining room, and the "black room" frescos from the original Villa Farnesina. I am expecting my research and long walks in Rome to yield much new subject matter, as well as rich inspiration for surface and color. I expect my love and knowledge of Italian film, especially from the nineteen-forties, fifties and sixties, to become part of my narrative. Just as the great Soviet Constructivists became part of my Eisenstein narrative, I expect Livia, Augustus, et al to be joined by Fellini, a great artist whose work was ‘beyond category’.”
