Saturday, March 4th on Zoom
10am Los Angeles, 11am Phoenix, 1pm NY & Toronto, 6pm London, 7pm Florence
After centuries of focusing almost exclusively on the male members of the Medici dynasty, in recent years historians have become increasingly interested in the Medici women and the roles they played in one of the most glittering eras of history—the Florentine Renaissance. In this talk, Dr. Kaborycha will explore those women’s influence on the politics, culture, and especially the arts in Italy, from the 15th through the 17th centuries, through their letters and correspondence. In the process, we will also consider letter-writing as practiced by Renaissance
Italian women in general, asking the question: “Were the Medici women unusual, or could many other women read and write as well?”
Dr. Kaborycha will discuss women’s literacy during this period—how they learned to write, who they wrote to, and, most important, what they wrote about. She will read letters written by Medici women and others, as they made their voices heard on issues both large and small, sometimes with l startling intimacy.
Born in New York City and raised in California, Lisa Kaborycha holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Medieval and Early Modern European History. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship with the Medici Archive Project, and Harvard’s Villa I Tatti Fellowship in Italian Renaissance Studies. She is the author of A Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375-1650 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) and A Short History of Renaissance Italy (Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall, 2011), currently being issued in a second edition by Taylor & Francis, which is also publishing a new book entitled Voices from the Italian Renaissance: A Sourcebook. Kaborycha lives in Florence and teaches courses in Italian Renaissance History and History of Art at various American university programs in Tuscany and regularly lectures in the History of Art at the British Institute in Florence.
To RSVP: Paola50122@gmail.com
Minimum suggested donation: $20
This talk is free for Friends of Paola's Studiolo!
Look forward to seeing you on Zoom!
Warmest regards,
Paola
