New Books in Italian Studies

• Camilla Annerfeldt, "Clothing and Identity in Early Modern Rome" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

  Camilla Annerfeldt joins to discuss Clothing and Identity in Early Modern Rome (Bloomsbury, 2025). This is the first book-length exploration of the clothes worn in early modern Rome and provides novel insights into the city of Rome during one of its most fascinating periods. It also challenges the notion – well-established in dress historical research on the early modern period – that one was supposed to dress solely according to one's social station; as Camilla Annerfeldt explores in great depth, this notion does not always seem to have been applicable to early modern Rome because of its very constitution. Using a range of primary sources from the Roman archives as well as texts of early modern writers, Clothing and Identity in Early Modern Rome presents a vivid account of the history of an early modern society, which will be helpful to historians of fashion, society, politics, material culture, and art, as well as everyone interested in the period when Rome was one of the dominant centres of Europe – culturally, socially, and politically. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

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• Anna Wainwright, "Widow City: Gender, Emotion, and Community in the Italian Renaissance" (U Delaware Press, 2025)

  Widow City: Gender, Emotion, and Community in Renaissance Italy (University of Delaware Press, 2025) investigates the ever-evolving role of the widow in medieval and early modern Italian literature, from canonical authors such as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, to the numerous widowed writers who rose to prominence in the sixteenth century—including Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, and Francesca Turina—and radically changed the conversation on public mourning. Engaging with broader intellectual discussions around gender, the history of emotions, the politics of mourning, and the construction of community, Widow City argues that widows served as key models demonstrating to readers not just how to mourn, but how to live well after devastating loss. At the same time, widows were figures of great anxiety: their status as unattached women, and the public performance of their grief, were viewed as very real threats to the stability of the social order. They are thus key to broader intellectual understandings of community and civic life in the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

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• Miles Pattenden, "Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700" (Oxford UP, 2017)

  Jana Byars talks to Miles Pattenden about his book, Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 (Oxford UP, 2017), just about to be released in paperback. This study offers a radical reassessment of the history of early modern papacy, constructed through the first major analytical treatment of papal elections in English. Papal elections, with their ceremonial pomp and high drama, are compelling theater, but, until now, no one has analyzed them on the basis of the problems they created for cardinals: how were they to agree rules and enforce them? How should they manage the interregnum? How did they decide for whom to vote? How was the new pope to assert himself over a group of men who, until just moments before, had been his equals and peers? This study traces how the cardinals' responses to these problems evolved over the period from Martin V's return to Rome in 1420 to Pius VI's departure from it in 1798, placing them in the context of the papacy's wider institutional developments. Miles Pattenden argues not only that the elective nature of the papal office was crucial to how papal history unfolded but also that the cardinals of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries present us with a unique case study for observing the approaches to decision-making and problem-solving within an elite political group. We also talk about the process in light of the upcoming Conclave and the election of a new pope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

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• Cam Grey, "Living with Risk in the Late Roman World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

  Living With Risk in the Late Roman World (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)explores the ever-present experiences of risk that characterized the daily existence of individuals, communities, and societies in the late Roman world (late third century CE through mid-sixth century CE). Recognizing the vital role of human agency, author Cam Grey bases his argument on the concept of the riskscape: the collection of risks that constitute everyday lived experience, the human perception of those risks, and the actions that exploit, mitigate, or exacerbate them. In contrast to recent grand narratives of the fate of the late Roman Empire, Living with Risk in the Late Roman World focuses on the quotidian practices of mitigation and management, foreknowledge and prediction, and mobilization and manipulation of risks at the individual and community levels. Grey illustrates the ubiquity of these practices through a collection of anecdotes that emphasize the highly localized, heterogeneous, and complementary nature of riskscapes: members of local communities enlisting figures of power to neutralize the hazards posed by imminent catastrophes, be it a tsunami, earthquake, or volcanic eruption; Christian holy figures both suffering and imposing bodily affliction as part of their claims to control such hazards and thereby to exercise influence in these communities; intimate experiences of seasonality and weather that shaped local practices of subsistence but also of self-representation; and geographically specific and fiercely contested claims to special knowledge and control of water. Multidisciplinary in its methodology and provocative in its argumentation, Living with Risk in the Late Roman World demonstrates that human communities in the ancient past were inextricably intertwined with the world around them, and that the actions they took simultaneously responded to and shaped the risks—both hazardous and favorable—that they perceived. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Cam Grey is Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

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• Annalisa Marzano, "Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome" (Cambridge UP. 2022)

  Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Annalisa Marzano investigates the cultural and political dimension of Roman arboriculture and the associated movement of plants from one corner of the empire to the other. It uses the convergent perspectives offered by textual and archaeological sources to sketch a picture of large-scale arboriculture as a phenomenon primarily driven by elite activity and imperialism. Arboriculture had a clear cultural role in the Roman world: it was used to construct the public persona of many elite Romans, with the introduction of new plants from far away regions or the development of new cultivars contributing to the elite competitive display. Exotic plants from conquered regions were also displayed as trophies in military triumphs, making plants an element of the language of imperialism. Dr. Marzano argues that the Augustan era was a key moment for the development of arboriculture and identifies colonists and soldiers as important agents contributing to plant dispersal and diversity. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there aredumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative tostudents. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to makeacademic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New BooksNetwork with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn,or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here toreceive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

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