In November 2022, Fine Brendtner published a chapter in “Venice and the Anthropocene : An Ecocritical Guide” by Wetland books. The chapter is co-written with Denise Frazier, co-director of NOLA Gulf South. https://wetlandsbooks.com/it/libri/collana-barene/venice-and-the-anthropocene

Abstract:

This chapter treats the history of wearing medical masks in public, the use of these masks in a carnivalesque fashion and the ascend of perhaps the most sinister version of it, that of the plague doctor, to a symbol of environmental and racial justice during the US “Summer of Racial Reckoning”; a series of protests that co-incited with the governmental covid lockdown. It further elucidates similarities between Venice and New Orleans as cities prone to coastal water hazards such as industrial pollution and erosion.

The joint work is the outcome of a week-long meeting at “Anthropocene Campus Venice”.

(The Anthropocene Campus Venice (ACV) is a one-week forum, with a strong educational commitment, around the theme of Water Politics in the Age of the Anthropocene, organized by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the Center for the Humanities and Social Change, and the Max Planck Partner Group The Water City. It is set in the framework of the Anthropocene Curriculum (AC), a long-term collaborative project initiated by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), supported by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.)