The conclusion summarizes the book’s core arguments – specifically, that studying the reception of ancient architecture at the world’s fairs at Chicago, Nashville, Omaha, St. Louis, and San Francisco furthers our understanding of the complex and possibly conflicting and contradictory ways in which the ancient world and its architecture were understood in the United States between 1893 and 1915. The appropriation of classical architecture for museums and fine art galleries emerges as a major theme. While classical architecture could be used to justify empire and institutional racism, it could also symbolize democracy and cultural sophistication. The fluidity and flexibility of ancient architecture underscore why it was so widely and creatively adapted in the United States. The physical legacy of these fairs – the buildings that survived and the parks – is also considered. In addition, the conclusion discusses the decline of ancient architecture as one of the most potent ways in which fair organizers expressed their cultural, political, and economic goals; the rejection of historical forms was vital to the birth of architectural Modernism. In sum, neo-antique architecture at American world’s fairs helped the nation and various cities to forge imagined ties to a glorious past, frame the present, and envisage the future.

In the mid-nineteenth century, opéra de salon dominated residential entertainment in Parisian salons. As these short, comedic operas were adapted for household receptions, librettists and composers faced a choice: adhere to staging conventions or adapt their works to fit the idiosyncrasies of residential space. Focusing on the salon of Anne Gabrielle Orfila, who was a proponent of opéra de salon and who hosted at least ten unique productions, this study examines how opera was adapted to salon space. It shows how stage action was not always contained by a single room, with scenes often spanning adjacent rooms. This affected audience seating and shaped the dramatic experience. The study also considers the significance of salon décor as it harmonized with or competed with the opera scenery. At a time when spectacle and elaborate designs prevailed at the Paris Opéra, opéra de salon presented a contrasting model that challenged theatrical conventions.

Arthurian topics feature in medieval mural painting and sculpture in architecture from the early twelfth century onwards. The ‘spatial’ aspects of these art forms were ideal for medieval patrons to represent and promote themselves to others. They competed through monumental art – be it in their own residence, a town hall, or a church – to show their identity and status. This chapter traces the main trends, iconographical topics, and influences, with consideration of the social and political function of the representation of Arthur and his knights in medieval monumental art.

In this chapter, we describe content delivery methods and lessons learned when combining the massive open online course (MOOC) with the smaller, remote version of the course offered through MIT in Fall 2020. This approach was tested when MIT school buildings were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and all classes became virtual. For a broader application, we also lay out hands-on tips for sustainable design educators on how to administer a hybrid course that outsources the tutorials, lectures, and assignments from the online course while engaging students through in-person or virtual meetings for in-depth discussions and course project development.

A little over a month after the storming of the Bastille, the royal theatre censor was keen to highlight that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen may have seemingly abolished censorship, but like a phoenix from the ashes, it would rise again at the hands of his fellow citizens. He was proved right. This study explores why that was the case, opening with an examination of contemporaneous definitions of censorship, an overview of the theatrical world at the time in France, and an analysis, using archival material from the regimes from 1788 to 1818, of how theatre could shape the public consciousness. The central argument here is that theatre censorship allowed contemporaries to influence what thousands of people saw (or not), and thus the internalized effects of these plays to shape the world around them.

This chapter explores the key context in which food-related goods were used, seen, and kept by peasants: home. Attention is given to the physical appearance and internal organisation of peasant homes in late medieval Valencia, as well as to the place that daily meals occupied within peasants’ everyday activity, labour, and way of life. The purpose of this chapter is to set a basic framework for the rest of the chapters of Part I, on the usages and practices surrounding food-related objects.

Italian cities were at the forefront of cultural change during the period 1400-1700, with innovations in architecture and urban design being adopted widely across the rest of the continent. During the early modern period, many Italian cities took on key elements of the built appearance that they retain to this day. Monumental form and the application of increasingly ordered urban planning regulations were achieved thanks also to well-organised administrations that levied taxes that could in part subsidise urban improvements. The wealth of urban elites likewise contributed to this process through widespread participation in the construction of residential palaces and new religious buildings. Cities, and the concentrations of people and wealth that assembled there, were at the very heart of the cultural renewal that is associated with the period; literary, artistic and intellectual culture was defined by its urban nature, whether this was within a courtly or civic setting.

Death, home, housing, and changes in Iranian identity through the materiality of space and the geography of social relations. Generational change is reflected in architecture, household organization, property values, and historical memory. The modern city and recent speculative residential building developments offer opportunities for more privacy, shiny surfaces, and dedicated space for nuclear families. But the loss of more integrated mixed-class neighborhoods and extended family residential spaces puts different pressures on individuals and the shared urban fabric. One family’s generational and spatial transitions symbolize the changes in Tehran’s social and architectural possibilities.

The final chapter explores the problems of agency and conformity among the enslaved at both individual and communal levels. I situate the Shepherd among ancient Mediterranean writers who understood enslaved persons to function as extensions of their own personae, as well as in conversation with Africana, feminist, postcolonial, and slavery studies on the agency of enslaved and possessed individuals. I suggest that God’s enslaved persons, as possessed instrumental agents of God, are imagined to be empowered by the enslaver to take particular actions and acquire particular virtues that contribute both to their enslaved obedience and their salvation. I then turn to the construction of a tower, the most lengthy visionary account in the Shepherd. Placed alongside Vitruvius’s On Architecture and Sara Ahmed’s scholarship, I argue that the Shepherd portrays the bodies of the enslaved as (ideally) uniformly shaped pieces of a monolithic ecclesiastical whole. Being “useful for the construction of the tower” is made manifest by how the various stones are shaped, reshaped, or rejected from being used to build a tower that is said to represent both God’s house and the Christian assembly itself.

Many types of divination in the Graeco-Roman world relied on interventions of human technical knowledge. This chapter explores astragalomancy (knuckle bone divination) and catoptromancy (mirror divination) as two ‘technical’ modes of ancient divination which, through catoptric and mathematical knowledge respectively, reflected and shaped theological assumptions about how the gods intervened in the human realm, and how this connected to human knowledge. The chapter also considers how religious architecture was technologically enhanced for particular theological purposes. The oracle to Trophonios in Lebadeia is analysed through this lens where human technē was essential to achieving a connection with the divine in this artificially manufactured divinatory setting.