“Waterways of Venice,” a new episode of the “What Makes Us Human” podcast series, explains the influence of water on European Renaissance culture. The podcast’s fourth season -- "What Does Water Mean to Us Humans?" -- showcases the newest thinking across academic disciplines about the relationship between humans and water.
“Venice, situated on the Adriatic Sea, [has] access to Asia as well as to all of Europe’s waterways. That incredibly cosmopolitan city shaped art, music, and literature – and its export throughout Europe—by way of its watery routes,” says William J. Kennedy, Avalon Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature in his podcast.
Kennedy researches the history of European literature and literary criticism from antiquity to the early modern period. His publications focus on Italian, French, English, and German texts from Dante to Milton and include “Petrarchism at Work: Contextual Economies in the Age of Shakespeare,” “The Site of Petrarchism: Early Modern National Sentiment in Italy, France, and England,” and “Authorizing Petrarch.”
The “What Makes Us Human?” podcast is produced by the College of Arts and Sciences in collaboration with the Cornell Broadcast Studios and features audio essays written and recorded by Cornell faculty. New episodes are released each Tuesday through the spring semester, airing on WHCU and WVBR. The episodes are also available for download on iTunes and SoundCloud and for streaming on the A&S humanities page, where text versions of the essays are also posted.
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