About this Project
links:
- The Anthony P. Campanella Collection of Giuseppe Garibaldi
- Bicentenario Garibaldi (1807-2007)
- Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento italiano/Museo Centrale del Risorgimento
- Istituto Mazziniano, Genoa, Italy
- Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento italiano, Torino
- Museo del Risorgimento di Bologna
- Risorgimento. Prospettive di ricerca (in Italian and German)
The Garibaldi / Risorgimento digital archive seeks to provide a comprehensive resource for the interdisciplinary study and teaching of the life and deeds of one of the protagonists of the Italian unification process (1807-1882), against the historical backdrop of 19th-century Europe, reconstructed with the help of materials from special collections at the Brown University libraries. The project will devote particular attention to the way Garibaldi's figure, his actions and the Italian Risorgimento as a whole were portrayed in contemporary media.
At the heart of this digital archive is a dynamic visualization of the library's Garibaldi panorama, which paired with a narrative based on the transcription and philological interpretation of its accompanying manuscript, will allow users to re-live the original spectacle of its display. Users can zoom in and out on specific scenes, listen to a voiceover narration based on the manuscript, in both Italian and English, and read explanatory notes about characters and events depicted in the panorama. They can retrieve additional information about the panorama as an artifact, the history of its exhibitions, as well as general information about panoramas and dioramas as optical devices and popular representational media in 19th-century Europe.
Accompanying the panorama is a collection of some 400 prints from illustrated newspapers that feature either Garibaldi or significant moments in the movement for Italian Unification. These prints are made available here through the generosity of Dr. David Kertzer, who allowed the library to digitize materials from his private collection. Additionally, materials from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection have been gathered for study.
We will begin the process of adding digital texts to this archive in 2008.
Editorial Board:
- Prof. David I. Kertzer (Anthropology and Italian Studies, Provost)
- Prof. Massimo Riva (Italian Studies, project coordinator)
- Prof. Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Italian Studies)
- Erica Moretti (Italian Studies, research assistant)
- Dr. Simone Poliandri (Anthropology, research assistant)
Project Staff
- Max Abrahams (Flash Animation)
- John Melson (Text Encoding)