This article explores the co-constitution of networks and infrastructure in the context of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture. We consider Maria Edgeworth’s conceptualization of the term network with and alongside infrastructure in her Harry and Lucy stories (1801–25) and offer an analysis of a manuscript tour by Mary Anne Eade fro…[Read more]

The early modern use of vegetal terms to explain the origin and growth of ores was widespread in mining industry, alchemy, and natural philosophy. In the writings of authors from many different backgrounds, mineral veins were often described as ‘trees’ which moved upwards, bore fruits, and underwent a life cycle. Accordingly, the existence in ore…[Read more]

With the climate of Brexit, xenophobia and white supremacy on the rise, health and safety of Black and Global Majority people under threat during the spread of Covid in the UK and elsewhere, a discussion of colonialism, migration, borders, and equality – in the classrooms and outside – is more pertinent than ever. Situating the ongoing Dec…[Read more]

This chapter discusses the aesthetic of refusal as it is articulated in contemporary performances in India and South Africa while debates around the #MeToo movement continue to agitate and exhaust womxn around the globe. In the aftermath of the Indian Supreme Court acquitting the Chief Justice of India of all sexual harassment charges in May 2019,…[Read more]

In the 19th century, a unique combination of scientific, social, political and cultural factors attracted crowds of visitors from all over the world to the Dolomite Mountains. This phenomenon had its epicenter in Fiemme Valley and in the town of Predazzo, where Michele Giacomelli and his family hosted a great number of these travelers in their…[Read more]

The essay discusses Maya Rao’s Walk and The Mothertongue Project’s Walk: South Africa to explore the languages of transnational and embodied feminist politics that these performances conjure. The two performances are instances of artistic responses to sexualized violence in India and South Africa as they engage with the politics of walking in the…[Read more]

I discuss the walking practice of Delhi-based artist Mallika Taneja in the context of its engagement with, and intervention in, the contemporary conversations on sexualised violence, gender, space and mobility in India. Taneja’s work is part of a variety of feminist activism to take place in India since the horrific gang rape of Jyoti Singh in D…[Read more]

In: “Connecting Territories: Exploring People and Nature, 1700-1850,” eds. S. Boscani Leoni, S. Baumgartner and M. Knittel, Leiden, Brill, 2021, pp. 54-57.

The genesis and growth of minerals, as well as the existence in ore veins of such organic features as ‘seeds’, ‘matrices’, and ‘nourishment’, remained central and recurrent issues for natural philosophers, technicians, alchemists and practitioners throughout early modern Europe. By providing an overview of the main themes, voices, and concurrent…[Read more]

Mémoire de master : analyse spatiale de sites protohistoriques d’Istrie (Croatie).

On scholarly traditions, quantitative assessments, and academic malpractices in Italy – and how someone disagreed (Isis, Vol. 110, n. S1, pp. 15-17 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/707594)

An autoethnographic account of negotiating disability and disclosure intersectionally in graduate school by four disabled graduate students.

Creative essay about 2013 immigrant shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy

Book review of the book by Marco Leonardi (“Renaissance Quarterly,” Volume 71, n. 4, 2018, pp. 1489-1491).

In the summer of 1704, Antonio Vallisneri (1661–1730), the preeminent Italian physician and natural philosopher of his time, traveled with a “daring soul” and “trembling feet” across the “silent horrors” of the northern Apennines: down the hills south of Reggio Emilia to northern Tuscany and the western edge of his native land, the Province of G…[Read more]

in: Nel nome di Lazzaro. Saggi di storia della scienza e delle istituzioni scientifiche tra il XVII e il XVIII secolo, edited by Centro Studi Lazzaro Spallanzani, Bologna, Edizioni Pendragon, 2014, pp. 207-220.

Review of the book “The Vesuvian Eruption of 1631: an Early Modern History” (by Alfonso Tortora)

By the end of the sixteenth century, many Jesuit colleges had become centers of excellence all over Europe for such disciplines as mathematics, astronomy, hydraulics, and mechanics. Not a few members of the order provided influential contributions to science: in the case of the study of waters, the inquisitive eye of Jesuits took part in the l…[Read more]

Since its first attempts to understand natural phenomena, early modern science devoted great attention to the problematic issue of the origin of springs. This essay examines the lively debate that emerged from the studies on fresh water during the years spanning from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth. By focusing on the…[Read more]

In 1687, after he graduated in Medicine, young Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730) returned in the Duchy of Modena and Reggio. In those years he mainly served as general practitioner; nevertheless, he also devoted many studies to various aspects of the natural sciences. He performed many observations, accurately reporting them in seven “Quaderni”…[Read more]