Areas of specialization
Early Modern European History, with a focus on Italy and on cultural and institutional history

Courses taught:

Biography
I graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Humanities and, in 2005, received my Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. My specialty is early modern European history, with a focus on Italy and on cultural and institutional history. My courses include Rome in the Renaissance, Early Modern Courts, Early Modern Cities, and Saints, Witches, and Heretics. I also teach in the medieval and early modern semesters of the Humanities program.

My dissertation parsed the social, intellectual, and cultural program of humanists associated with the early Quattrocento papal court. I published “Finding a Job as a Humanist: the Epistolary Collection of Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger” in Renaissance Quarterly and have given conference papers on joke collections and the creation of civility, the study of ancient Roman ruins, funeral orations and the crafting of ecclesiastical ideals, and a popular addition to the Aeneid. I am currently finishing an article on fifteenth century antiquarianism and working on a book about Rome and the Curia in the period just after the Great Schism. This book will explore the way in which humanists, prelates, and the Roman populace collaborated and competed as they began to turn Rome from an impoverished town into one of the great cultural capitals of the Renaissance. Using the writings of humanists as my major source, I will argue that these texts reveal a great deal not only about classical scholarship but also about social dynamics, gender roles, the mechanics of patronage, contemporary religion, politics, and court life.