Dr Jonathan Walker

PhD (Cambridge), MA (Glasgow)
International Research Fellow
Room 843, Brennan Building (A18)
jonathan.walker@arts.usyd.edu.au
+61 2 9351 6830

Research areas

• Spies and diplomats in early seventeenth-century Venice
• noble crime and criminal law in early modern Venice
• historical fiction (novels and films)
• photography and history
• modernization in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Venice.

Current projects

• I recently finished an extended photo-essay about modernization in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Venice, entitled ‘Let Us Burn the Gondolas’: Venice as a Modern City’.
• I am currently working on an experimental project in collaboration with an illustrator, the results of which will be presented in comic strip form.

Selected publications

Pistols! Treason! Murder!: The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007. An American edition of this book was published in July 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel (with Dan Hallett), Melbourne: Allen & Unwin, 2010 (forthcoming).

‘Gambling and Venetian Noblemen, c. 1500-1700’, Past and Present, 162 (1999), 28-69.

‘Antonio Foscarini in the City of Crossed Destinies’, Rethinking History, 5.2 (2001), 305-34; and now republished in R. Rosenstone and A. Munslow (eds), Experiments in Rethinking History, London 2004.

‘James Ellroy as Historical Novelist’, History Workshop Journal, 53 (2002), 181-204.

‘Political and Legal Discourse in Seventeenth-Century Venice’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44 (2002), 800-26.

(With Filippo de Vivo and James Shaw), 'A Dialogue on Spying in 17th Century Venice', Rethinking History, 10.3 (2006), 323-344.

'Let's Get Lost: On the Importance of Intineraries, Detours and Dead-Ends', Rethinking History, 10.4 (2006), 573-597.

'An Interview with A.S. Byatt and Lawrence Norfolk', Contemporary Literature, 47.3 (2006), 319-342.

‘Textual Realism and Re-Enactment’, in Historical Re-enactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn, eds Iain McCalman and Paul A, Pickering, London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 (forthcoming).

Conference activity

In 2007 I spoke at the ANZMEMS conference in Adelaide, at the ACIS conference in Brisbane, at a conference on 'Re-Enactment and the Arts' at ANU, and at the ‘Screenscapes’ conference in Sydney. In 2008, I spoke at the annual RSA meeting in Chicago, at a conference on ‘Recovering Lives’ at ANU, and at a conference on re-enactment at the University of York.

Other Professional Contributions

I am the Reviews Editor for the journal Rethinking History.

From February to April 2007, I was a Visiting Fellow at ANU. From January to March 2010, I shall be a Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.

More information

For more on Pistols! Treason! Murder!: The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy, Five Wounds, and Let Us Burn the Gondolas: Venice as a Modern City, see the web site http://www.jonathanwalkervenice.com and my blog http://www.jonathanwalkersblog.com/