Biography

Emily Michelson is a cultural historian of Italy in the Reformation era. Her work investigates how religious change affects standards of behavior for individuals and for groups, and creates tensions between external social norms and internal experience. She has recently published The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Harvard University Press, 2013), which reassesses the contributions of Italian preachers during religious crisis. Emily received her PhD in History and Renaissance Studies from Yale University in 2006, and was Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah from 2006 to 2009. She is now a Lecturer in History at the University of St Andrews.

Project Summary

Emily’s project examines the changing meanings of Jews and Judaism in Counter-Reformation Rome. It asks how Catholic reformers, seeking to remake the city as a model of Christian virtue, reconciled their abstract and theological notions of Judaism with Rome’s ancient and prominent Jewish population.