New Books in Italian Studies

Nov 20 2024 297 ep. 57 mins 206
New Books in Italian Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Italy about their New Books

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

  History  Science  Society & Culture
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Dennis Romano, "Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Nov 20 2024 68 mins  
No city stirs the imagination more than Venice. From the richly ornamented palaces emerging from the waters of the Grand Canal to the dazzling sites of Piazza San Marco, visitors and residents alike sense they are entering, as fourteenth-century poet Petrarch remarked, "another world." During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Venice was celebrated as a model republic in an age of mo

Mary Lindemann and Deanna Shemek, "Redreaming the Renaissance: Essays on History and Literature in Honor of Guido Ruggiero" (U Delaware Press, 2024)

Nov 10 2024 41 mins  
Redreaming the Renaissance: Essays on History and Literature in Honor Guido Ruggiero (University of Delaware Press, 2024) seeks to remedy the dearth of conversations between scholars of history and literary studies by building on the pathbreaking work of Guido Ruggiero to explore the cross-fertilization between these two disciplines, using the textual world of the Italian Renaissan

Filippo Gianferrari, "Dante's Education: Latin Schoolbooks and Vernacular Poetics" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Nov 06 2024 51 mins  
In fourteenth-century Italy, literacy became accessible to a significantly larger portion of the lay population (allegedly between 60 and 80 percent in Florence) and provided a crucial means for the vernacularization and secularization of learning, and for the democratization of citizenship. In Dante's Education: Latin Schoolbooks and Vernacular Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2

Toni Alimi, "Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Oct 28 2024 66 mins  
Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remarkably close connections between Au

Sharon Kinoshita, "Marco Polo and His World" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

Oct 26 2024 48 mins  
Sharon Kinoshita talks with Jana Byars about her new book, Marco Polo and His World (Reaktion Press, 2024). A lavishly illustrated tour of the famed adventurer's globetrotting travels, written by a celebrated translator of Polo's writings. At the age of seventeen, Marco Polo left his Venetian home on a continent-spanning adventure that lasted for nearly a quarter century. Imprisone

Joseph John Viscomi, "Migration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure Between Italy and Egypt" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Oct 18 2024 97 mins  
How has migration shaped Mediterranean history? And what role did conflicting temporalities and the politics of departure play in the age of decolonisation? Using a microhistorical approach, Migration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure Between Italy and Egypt (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores the experiences of over 55,000 Italian subjects in Egypt during the late

Migration, Constraints, and Suffering

Oct 12 2024 37 mins  
A key part of the experience of migration is not being in full control of one’s circumstances and doing. In this episode, Ingrid Piller speaks with Marco Santello about his research with Gambian migrants in Italy. The focus is on Marco’s recent article in Language in Society about migrant experiences of constraints and suffering. For additional resources, show notes, and transc

Pamela O. Long on the Long, Long, Long History of Technology

Oct 07 2024 71 mins  
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with MacArthur “Genius Prize” winning historian Pamela Long about her long career writing about the history of ancient and Medieval technologies. The pair use Long’s forthcoming book, Technology in Mediterranean and European Lands, 600-1600 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025), as a launching point but also cover her previous work, especially incl

Serena Laiena, "The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy: Self-Fashioning and Mutual Marketing" (U Delaware Press, 2023)

Oct 05 2024 47 mins  
Serena Laiena joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Theater Couple in Early Modern Italy: Self-Fashioning and Mutual Marketing (University of Delaware Press, 2023). Who were the first celebrity couples? How was their success forged? Which forces influenced their self-fashioning and marketing strategies? These questions are at the core of this study, which looks at the b

Francesco Piraino, "Sufism in Europe: Islam, Esotericism and the New Age" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

Oct 04 2024 65 mins  
Francesco Piraino’s Sufism in Europe: Islam, Esotericism and the New Age (University of Edinburgh Press, 2024) is a vital contribution to the growing field of Sufism in the Global North which often encompasses studies of North America and western Europe. This monograph study, the first focused study of Sufism in Italy and France, uses ethnographic data and sociological analysis t