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Personal History

After completing an undergraduate degree at Monash University I became a secondary school teacher and taught for a number of years in Victorian government schools. I returned to study after an extended period in Italy and completed both an MA and a PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Melbourne.

I have worked at Monash University since 2000 when I was appointed to a Cassamarca Lectureship, shared between the Schools of Historical Studies and Languages, Cultures and Linguistics (Italian Program). My masters and doctoral research focused on the late fifteenth century Italian writer, Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, and since then I have worked on several new archival-based projects in Renaissance cultural history. A post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti in 2001/2002 allowed me to complete research on the Gonzaga correspondence in the State Archive of Mantua and to investigate the history of the European letter with particular emphasis on women's use of the letter between the 14th-16th centuries.

Current Research

I am currently completing a study of dynastic marriage and the diplomatic and cultural role of elite women in Renaissance Italy. This project investigates the role of princely consorts, and the political significance of marital and female friendship, within the Renaissance courtly state of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It focuses on the well-documented union of Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of the Italian principality of Mantua and will demonstrate how the close collaboration between man and wife in the dynastic marriages, typical of Renaissance states and courts all over Europe, made an essential contribution to the functioning, self-definition and success of these political entities in a way that has not been recognized by traditional analysis of the Italian Renaissance state.

I am also preparing with Antonio Pagliaro of LaTrobe University a translation with notes and critical introduction of the late fourteenth century correspondence of Margherita Datini, one of the earliest collections of vernacular letters written by a woman. This volume will be published in the well-established series, The Other Voice in early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret King and Albert Rabil. This translation is part of a larger study on the history of the European letter with particular emphasis on women's use of the letter between the 14th-16th centuries.

Major Publications

I have analysed the literary works and edited the letters of the Italian writer Giovanni Sabadini degli Arienti in two publications: The Letters of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti (1481-1510), Florence, L.S. Olschki and the University of Western Australia, 2002 and Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti. A Literary Career, Florence, L.S. Olschki, 1996.

Forthcoming
With F.W Kent, chapter on the Renaissance in Friendship: A History, ed. B.Caine, Equinox Publishing, London, 2009.
With F.W Kent, "Margherita Cantelmo and Agostino Strozzi: Friendship’s Gifts and a Portrait Medal by Costanzo da Ferrara", I Tatti Studies. Essays in the Renaissance, 12 2008.
"The Travels of Isabella d'Este Marchioness of Mantua" Studies in Travel Writing, ed. Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt, 13:3 (2009).

In Preparation
With Antonio Pagliaro The Letters of Margherita Datini (1384-1410) (an annotated translation with critical introduction of the 250 letters of Margherita Datini) to be published in the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.

Book Chapters
"A Woman's Path to Literacy. The Letters of Margherita Datini (1384-1410)" in Practices of Gender in Late Medieval and early Modern Europe, ed. M. Cassidy-Welch and P. Sherlock, Brepols, Turnhout, 2008.
"Machiavelli in Skirts. Isabella d’Este and Politics”, in Virtue,Liberty and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women 1400-1800, ed. K. Green and J. Broad, Springer Press, 2007, pp. 57-75.
"An insatiable appetite for news: Isabella d'Este and a Bolognese correspondent", in Religious Rituals, Images, and Words: the Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. F.W. Kent and C. Zika, Brepols, Turnhout, 2005, pp. 375-388.

Articles in refereed journals
"Friendship and Dynastic Marriage in Renaissance Italy" Literature and History, 17.1 2008.
"The Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1487", Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XLI, 1997, pp.188-196.

Areas of Research & Supervision

I am keen to supervise projects in medieval and renaissance history, especially cultural and social history. My specific interests are Italian and other European courts in the early modern period, vernacular Italian texts and proto-feminist writings of the 15th and 16th centuries as well as the history of gender, travel, letter-writing and friendship. Beyond this I am also able to supervise projects on European letter-writing from the late medieval period and literary production connected to female patronage in early modern France and England.

Completed Theses
Lisa Di Crescenzo, "Carissimo zio": The Letters of Bartolomeo Dei to Benedetto Dei (1486 – 1492). (MA 2009)

Teaching

HSY1020 - Renaissance Europe (with Dr Peter Howard)
HSY2/3025 - Beyond Machiavelli
HSY2/3630 - Renaissance Florence
HSY4115/HYM5115 - Renaissance Correspondence