Niall Atkinson

Biography

Niall Atkinson’s teaching and scholarship focus on public space, urban history, soundscapes, geography and travel as well as the architecture and urbanism of late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. His research has concerned the relationship between sound, space, and architecture and their role in the construction of pre-modern urban societies. His current projects explore digital visualizations of early modern urban soundscapes through GIS technology, as well as the visual and sonic cultures of the Indian Ocean. He is also currently collaborating on a new book project with Susanna Caviglia (Duke University) that is tentatively entitled Wandering in Rome: French travelers and the image of the early modern city, which investigates the aesthetics and the mechanics of urban mobility that constituted the experience and representation of Rome for Early Modern French travelers.

In 2019, Atkinson was the Geddes Visiting Fellow at the School of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. He received the President’s Citation for creative and curatorial work representing Chicago in 2018 as one of the curators of the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (American Institute of Architects (AIA). In 2018, he was also awarded a Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring at the University of Chicago.  In 2017-18, he was appointed a fellow at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, and has received research grants from the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society (University of Chicago). He has also held fellowships from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut).

Atkinson’s publications include a monograph entitled The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016). His articles include “Making Sense Of Rome in the Eighteenth-Century: Walking and the French Aesthetic Imagination,” Word and image, 34:3, 216-236 (with Susanna Caviglia); “Seeing Sound: Mapping the Florentine Soundscape," in Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modem City, eds. Nicholas Terpstra, Colin Rose (Routledge, 2016), and “Thinking Through Noise, Building Toward Silence: Creating a Sound Mind and Sound Architecture in the Premodern City,” Grey Room 60 (2015).  Elements of his current project on architecture and early modern geography has been published as “Getting Lost in the Italian Renaissance,” I Tatti Studies in the Renaissance 19, 1 (2016).  Forthcoming articles on travel, urban mobility, and architectural experience will appear in Routledge and the Journal of Early Modern History.

Publications

The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life

Penn State University Press
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2016

“Getting Lost in the Italian Renaissance,” I Tatti Studies in the Renaissance 19, 1 (2016)

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“Seeing Sound: Mapping the Florentine Soundscape,” in Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modem City, eds. Nicholas Terpstra, Colin Rose (Routledge, 2016)

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“Thinking Through Noise, Building Toward Silence: Creating a Sound Mind and Sound Architecture in the Premodern City,” Grey Room 60 (2015)

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“The Social Life of the Senses: Architecture, Food, and Manners in the Renaissance,” in A Cultural History Of The Senses, Vol. 3:  Renaissance, ed. Herman Roodenburg (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2014)

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“The Italian Piazza: From Gothic Footnote to Baroque Theater,” in A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque art, ed. Babette Bohn and James M. Saslow (Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2013)

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“A Guide to Listening to Renaissance Florence,” in On Listening, ed. Angus Carlyle and Cathy Lane (London: RGAP, 2013)

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“The Republic of Sound: Listening to Florence at the Threshold of the Renaissance,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance Vol. 16, No. 1/2 (September 2013)

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“Sonic Armatures:  Constructing an Acoustic Regime in Renaissance Florence,” Senses and Society 7 no.1 (2012)

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Exhibitions

U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale (co-curator)

Profiles

Andrei Pop
Andrei Pop
Modern Art and Aesthetics
Department Chair
CWAC 162 | Tuesdays 1-2pm or by appointment.
773.702.0278
Niall Atkinson
Niall Atkinson
Medieval and Renaissance Architecture and Urban History
CWAC 260
773.702.0270
Wei-Cheng Lin
Wei-Cheng Lin
Chinese Art and Architecture
Architectural Studies Advisor
CWAC 268 | Office Hours: Wednesdays 9-10am and 12-1pm
773.702.0268
2006-07
Iowa State University
Assistant Professor, East Asian Art and Architecture
Potters Wheel
Richard Neer
Ancient Greek Art and Architecture
CWAC 259
773.702.5890
Megan Sullivan
Megan Sullivan
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art
CWAC 272
773.702.5126