In 1616, Monteverdi told Alessandro Striggio that he couldn’t imitate winds because they are not human. “Ariadne moved us because she was a woman and similarly Orpheus because he was a man.” But what if Orpheus was not a man driven by his own internal passions and creative instincts but instead was an automaton—an inanimate machine with spontaneous motion and sound creation.... Read more about Thursday Seminar: What if Orfeo was an Automaton?

A model of ‘Civic religion’, understood as municipal attempts to develop legitimacy through sacred language and devotional activities, is now widely used by historians of late medieval and renaissance Europe. In this seminar Andrews will...

Lucrezia Marinella developed an interpretation of Aristotle's claims concerning sexual difference and body temperature, and also elaborated a set of criticisms of those claims.... Read more about Thursday Seminar: The Reception of Aristotle in Lucrezia Marinella's "La nobiltà et l'eccellenza delle donne co'diffetti et mancamenti de gli uomini" (Venice, 1601)

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...

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...

The visual and cultural depiction of the relationship between man and monkey is the focus of this seminar. In particular, Andrea Rizzi will explore a specific representation of monkeys in early modern visual images that has received relatively...

During this seminar, Emanuele Lugli will explore the overlooked relationship of fashion and cartography in constructing notions of territoriality.... Read more about Thursday Seminar - “The Fabrication of Borders: Tailoring, Triangulation, Territoriality in Italy and Beyond, 1340-1760” & short presentations from term Fellows

In the Renaissance and Baroque, preparatory terracotta models were used by artists to develop their sculptural ideas. Harvard Art Museums Conservator Tony Sigel will discuss his close-up technical examination and documentation of Bernini and...

... Read more about Seminar: Michael Cole and Diletta Gamberini, "Vincenzo Danti's Deceits"

As pieces designed for vocal performance, secular songs such as French chansons and Italian madrigals record vernacular accents, dialects, and sounds often excluded in literary and scientific texts. 

... Read more about Seminar: Kate van Orden, "Music as a Sonic Record: Sixteenth-Century Vernaculars in Perspective"