This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge: first, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merger on the relative claims of reason and authority; second, his use…[Read more]

This article focuses on the diplomatic mission of the Ragusean captain Casilari, to free the crew of a Ragusean ship captured by the Moroccan pirates. Through the relations between Ragusa and the empire of Morocco, the paper deals with an episode of the endemic piracy in the Mediterranean, but it also sheds light on the importance of the Ragusean…[Read more]

My poetic Preface to Kathleen Biddick’s book, “Make and Let Die: Untimely Sovereignties” (punctum books, 2016), which is indebted to and adapted from Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck,” which sketches out the exploratory soundings of a sea-wreck of forgotten histories that bears uncanny resonances with Kathleen Biddick’s own acediou…[Read more]

“Liquid Beowulf” serves as the Introduction to “The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook” (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2006), and makes an argument for the Old English poem as a richly inter- and cross-temporal cultural response to historical traumas that still haunt our present moment and which also poses always important (and…[Read more]

Extending an argument presented in two articles published Studies in Art Education and Visual Arts Research, I discuss what would a poetic historiography mean for art education research.

This paper describes a catalogued but rare manuscript (call number 170/307) held by the Charles Young Research Library at UCLA, in which one can find the by-laws of a barely known medieval confraternity, located in the city of Teruel and devoted to St. Julian.
Most of these by-laws were written around 1402, although it does also…[Read more]

This essay offers an introduction to select disciplinary developments in the study of history and in historical study of the Hebrew Bible. It focuses first and foremost on “cultural history,” a broad category defined by nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in anthropology and sociology, literary theory and linguistics, and other fie…[Read more]

371 is an introduction to canonical works of Early Modern Spanish. This semester, we take a novel approach to the reading and interpretation of masterpieces of Spanish literature to revisit the notion of canon, and to challenge standard disciplinary approaches that constrain Spanish and Portuguese within the boundaries of national literary and…[Read more]

Notes on the book Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer—a book by Richard E. Palmer (Evanston: Nortwestern UP, 1969). Part I: On the Definition, Scope, and Significance of Hermeneutics; Part II: Four Major Theorists (Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer); Part III: A Hermeneutical M…[Read more]

An attempt to think about authorial strategies of dislocation and relocation in 1 Peter. First presented at a conference on Early Christianity and its urban environment held at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, England, 2015.

This essay uses Arnaldo Momigliano’s genealogy of antiquarianism and historiography to propose a new method for engaging the past. The Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987) traced antiquarianism from its advent in ancient Greece and later growth in Rome to its early modern efflorescence, its usurpation by history, and its transformation…[Read more]

The ruins of church-mosques, museums, and ancient cities inform material culture as allegories inform spiritual life, invoking transcendence amidst desacralization. Drawing on Benjamin, Jameson, and Koselleck to advance our understanding of the functioning of ruins across time, this ethnography of ruins engages with the paradoxes generated by…[Read more]

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]

Es bien conocido que la Relación sumaria de la Historia verdadera del Rey Don Pedro (PhiloBiblon BETA Texid 3377) es una de las obras de mayor complejidad analítica en toda la literatura hispánica de finales de la Edad Media y comienzo del Renacimiento. No solo en lo que concierne a su laberíntico entramado ecdótico, del que se han ocupado inve…[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]

This paper deals with the identification of the microscope used by the Italian physician and naturalist Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730) during his research activity. The investigation was structured in three phases: a) a first text analysis on published and manuscript sources, looking for information about the microscope(s) used by Vallisneri; b)…[Read more]

‘Travelling’ Recipes in Austrian eighteenth-century manuscript recipe books.

An examination of spatial themes in the emerging genre of environmental fiction. Originally presented as a talk at the Futures of American Literature event at Uppsala University (Sweden).