Event Details

In 2020-2021, we explore the global significance of Ruskin’s legacy in our seminar series ‘Ruskin Beyond Britain’.

Did John Ruskin influence the first major wave of industrialization in nineteenth-century Brazil?

Claudio Amaral will examine the effect of Ruskin’s ideas on the writings of the Brazilian lawyer and politician Rui Barbosa (1849–1923). Brazil was not an industrialized nation in the mid-1800s. At the time, it depended on slave labour and the export of raw materials. Some Brazilians, including Barbosa, wanted Brazil to industrialize. He imagined that the industrialization process would begin with educational reforms aimed at changing a culture that despised manual labour into one that valued it. Barbosa based his project on the Ruskinian concept of ‘work with pleasure’.

Professor Claudio Amaral is Professor in the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidade São Judas Tadeu, in São Paulo, Brazil. He received his PhD from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Universidade de São Paulo in 2005 for his thesis, ‘John Ruskin and Drawing in Brazil’, and his subsequent publications include The Influence of John Ruskin on the Teaching of Drawing in Brazil (2011). He completed a visiting research fellowship at The Ruskin in 2013 and at the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa in Rio de Janeiroin 2014.

Respondent: Professor Ruth Conroy Dalton is Head of School of Architecture and Professor of Architecture at Lancaster University. Ruth’s research interests are centred around the relationship between the spatial design of buildings and environments and their effect on how people understand and interact in those spaces. She is a leading expert in space syntax analysis, architectural and spatial cognition and pedestrian movement/wayfinding. She is passionately interested in placing the user at the centre of architectural design.

This event is part of the 2020-2021 Ruskin Seminar Series, 'Ruskin Beyond Britain'. The series will place Ruskin’s legacy in a global context, featuring presentations from an international community of researchers who are exploring how Ruskin’s ideas have affected societies from Russia to Brazil, from America to Italy, and from France to China. Each seminar will include a presentation and response, followed by questions and discussion with participants. The Ruskin Seminar Series is free, online and open to all. If you would like to join the seminar reading group, email the-ruskin@lancaster.ac.uk.