The Eighth Lamp

Ruskin Studies Today

CURRENT RESEARCH
2007 - Early 2008

John Ruskin, Cultural Travel and Popular Access
1st October 2005 until 30th September 2008

Participants: This is a research project funded by the AHRC, and it is being undertaken by the Universities of Lancaster, Central Lancashire, and Salford.

Aim: The scope of the project is reconstruction and analysis of Ruskin’s principal cultural tours in Britain, France, Italy, and Switzerland. According to the project leaders, it will ‘involve the comparative analysis of the It will compare the practices of cultural experience in these and his related guidebooks and drawings with his social and economic teachings, particularly those addressed to children, women and workers. By placing Ruskin's works in the context of contemporaneous developments in popular leisure activities and the rise of mass tourism, important and complex conflicts between elitism and popularisation will also be explored’.
See http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/research/ahrc.htm

Ruskinian Theatre: The Aesthetics of the Late Nineteenth Century Popular London Stage, 1870-1901
October 2004- 2007

Participants: This is an AHRC funded project and it is being supported by the Ruskin Programme. The project is being lead by Professor Jeffrey Richards (Principal Investigator), Dr Kate Newey (Co-investigator), and Peter Yeandle (Research Associate), and it is a joint initiative between the History and Theatre Studies departments based in History.

Aim: According to the project website, the project has 4 major aims: a) To chart the interest and involvement of John Ruskin in the theatre, and examine the influence of his ideas about education, culture and society on the Victorian theatre; b) Assess the impact of Ruskinian aesthetics on the Victorian theatre, and chart the involvement in the theatre of leading practitioners of other arts, examining the stage as a meeting place of the contemporary arts; c) Trace the circulation and cultural significance of Ruskin’s gender theories in the iconography of Victorian performers, and examine the relationships between the popular iconography of performers and the aesthetic principles of the Ruskin-influenced Pre-Raphaelites; and d) Examine the theatre as a national institution participating in the Victorian culture of improvement. See http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/research/ruskiniantheatre.htm.

Ruskin's Venetian Notebooks: Reconstructing the Research Methods and Compositional Practices for The Stones of Venice

Participants: This is an AHRC funded project supported by the Ruskin Centre. It is being lead by Ian Bliss, Roger Garside, Ray Haslam.

Aim: According to the project website, the aim is to ‘examine Ruskin's engagement with Venice (as well as other places visited and studied on his journey) and with the contemporary representation and context of the time’. The project will explore his ‘working methods and will make the manuscript materials accessible in an edited electronic edition’.
See http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ruskin/research/venice.htm