Fields
Early Modern Italy; Venice and the Veneto; Charity; Religious and institutional change in early modern Europe; Lay confraternities in Renaissance Italy; Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Mediterranean World.
Bio
My area of research is early modern Italian social and religious history. Interested in questions of lay piety, popular religion and the formation of regional identity, I examined a confraternal charitable hospital on the Venetian mainland. That research produced a monograph, book section and several articles exploring Italian charity and lay devotion. While working in the archives in Treviso, I came across an unpublished manuscript that inspired my current area of research: early modern Italian miracle books. In the sixteenth-century, the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Treviso, was an important regional and international pilgrimage site. When I tried to place Treviso’s shrine and manuscript into a larger historiographical context, I realized that scholars have not thoroughly examined the publication history of Italian miracle books. Although descriptions of miraculous events and sacred spaces were religious best-sellers in the early modern period, scholars have only recently begun the difficult work of cataloguing vernacular miracle books. The lack of secondary research, therefore, has transformed my study of one miraculous Marian shrine into a greatly expanded study of vernacular religious books. My research will hopefully yield valuable insights into the dynamic nature of piety during the early modern period, especially as Catholic writers responded to the challenges of the Reformation. I continue to publish on the history of charity in Venice as well as the miraculous in early modern Italy.
Courses Taught
1613 - Western Civilization to 1500
3243 - Renaissance, 1350-1517
3363 - Popular Religion in the West, 1300-1700
3483 - Reformation Europe, 1517-1648
3980 - Studies in History
4980 - Topics in History
5000 - Thesis
6000 - Dissertation
6100 - Directed Readings in History