Architectural History & Theory Seminar Series | Stephanie O’Rourke
Schedule
Tue Feb 24 2026 at 05:15 pm to 06:30 pm
UTC+00:00Location
Adam House, Basement Theatre, The University of Edinburgh | Edinburgh, SC
About this Event
Join us for the next Architectural History and Theory Seminar Series of 25/26 by Stephanie O’Rourke.
This lecture will be hybrid. Please book your ticket for attendance in person or online. You will receive access to the online event via email the day before the event.
Abstract
Perhaps no professional artist in the nineteenth century cared more about coal mine ventilation than the British painter John Martin. Although Martin is mainly known for his sublime portrayal of epic narratives on enormous – and enormously popular – canvases, he was also an amateur engineer. This talk uses Martin to explore the pictorial protocols of resource extraction in early nineteenth-century Britain. How might painting have participated in the management of the desired in-flow of resources like water to urban centres but also to the dangerous out-flow of waste, toxic gases, and other perceived threats?
About Stephanie O’Rourke
Stephanie O’Rourke is a Senior Lecturer in art history at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Picturing Landscape in an Age of Extraction: Europe and its Colonial Networks (Chicago, 2025) and Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism (Cambridge, 2021).
Image: John Martin, The Bridge over Chaos, Paradise Lost, Book 10, Line 312 & 347, 1824/26, mezzotint on laid paper. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown.
Access
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Where is it happening?
Adam House, Basement Theatre, The University of Edinburgh, 3 Chambers Street, Edinburgh, United KingdomEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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