The contention that before the late eighteenth century learned opinion held that there was only one sex, famously proposed by Thomas Laqueur in Making Sex (1990), has achieved near-canonical status in the eyes of many historians and literary scholars.... Read more about Thursday Seminar: "Translating Sex: The Long History of the 'One-Sex' Body"

This seminar is an exercise in micro-philology and global history. Through the analysis of a very short manuscript, Pier Mattia Tommasino aims to disentangle the complex and intertwined relations between European Orientalists, Italian...

... Read more about 2017 Bernard Berenson Lectures on the Italian Renaissance: Lecture 3

... Read more about 2017 Bernard Berenson Lectures on the Italian Renaissance: Lecture 2

... Read more about 2017 Bernard Berenson Lectures on the Italian Renaissance: Lecture 1

According to the early modern discourse on art, Annibale Carracci was the inventor of caricature, intended as ritrattino caricato, a portrait that accentuates the disproportional features of an individual likeness. The reasons for this...

In our last Thursday seminar of 2016, Justin Steinberg will explore the influence of the inquisitorial trial - the most important development in legal procedure in Western Europe - on the most important development in Western literary style...

The seminar discusses Melchiorre Cafà’s sculpture of St Rose of Lima of 1665 in the context of the iconography of the beatification and sanctification of Rose of St Mary, 1668 and 1671. One the hand, the construction and propagation of the first...

This seminar will explore Western interaction with various cultures and communities in the Eastern Mediterranean. Spanning the period from the late 13th to the 18th century, the short presentations will focus on commercial, artistic, and religious encounters and exchanges.... Read more about Thursday Seminar "Transcultural Encounters in the Eastern Mediterranean: Commerce, Art, and Religion between East and West during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods"

During this seminar Nevra Necipoğlu will aim to reconstruct the social topography and urban development of Constantinople during the 14th and 15th centuries, based on evidence from Byzantine, Western, and Ottoman sources. Data pertaining to...