Episodios

  • Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)

    Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)
    Jan 7 2026
    Rachel Midura joins Jana Byars to talk about Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP, 2025) connects and situates histories of the post and government intelligence alongside print technology and state power in the wider context of the early modern communications revolution. In the sixteenth century, postal services became central to domestic governance and foreign policy enterprises, extended government reach and surveillance, and offered new control over the public sphere. Rachel Midura focuses on the Tassis family, members of which served as official postmasters to the dukes of Milan, the pope, Spanish kings, and Holy Roman emperors. Using administrative records and family correspondence, she follows the Tassis family, their agents, and their rivals as their influence expanded from northern Italy across Europe. Postal Intelligence shows how postmasters and postmistresses were key players in early modern diplomacy, commerce, and journalism, whose ultimate success depended on both administrative ingenuity and strategic ambiguity. 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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    42 m
  • Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

    Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
    Jan 3 2026
    Stuart Carroll's Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2023) transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 and 1800 by exploring how ordinary people felt about their enemies and the violence it engendered. Enmity, a state or feeling of mutual opposition or hostility, became a major social problem during the transition to modernity. He examines how people used the law, and how they characterised their enmities and expressed their sense of justice or injustice. Through the examples of early modern Italy, Germany, France and England, we see when and why everyday animosities escalated and the attempts of the state to control and even exploit the violence that ensued. This book also examines the communal and religious pressures for peace, and how notions of good neighbourliness and civil order finally worked to underpin trust in the state. Ultimately, enmity is not a relic of the past; it remains one of the greatest challenges to contemporary liberal democracy. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. 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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    51 m
  • Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli, "Citifying Jesus: The Making of a Roman Religion in the Roman Empire" (Mohr Siebeck, 2024)

    Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli, "Citifying Jesus: The Making of a Roman Religion in the Roman Empire" (Mohr Siebeck, 2024)
    Dec 24 2025
    Religion and urban life are the most successful strategies of handling, enhancing, and capitalizing on human sociability. By integrating religious studies, archaeology, and spatial theory, Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli aims to re-describe the formation of Christ religion as urban religion in Citifying Jesus: The Making of a Roman Religion in the Roman Empire (Mohr Siebeck, 2024). Spanning almost four centuries of Christian literature from Paul to Augustine, the author shows that several characteristics commonly attributed to Christ religion are, in fact, outcomes of the distinct ways in which religious agents enact urbanity and interact with the urban space. The study brings the urbanity of religious agents into focus, shedding light on significant elements of religious transformation, innovation, institutionalization, empowerment, and resistance to power. Simultaneously, it explores the key urban features that shaped the emergence and development of Christ religion. Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna. Previously he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt and has spent research stays in Paris, Berlin, and Geneva. His research interests focus on the history of the ancient Christ religion, methodological advances in the study of ancient Mediterranean religious groups and traditions, issues of theory and method in the accademic study of religions, and the phenomenon of ancient and contemporary urban religion. He is conversant with issues of political theology, sociology of religion, critical theory of space, and critique of ideology (including religious ideologies). Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). 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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    56 m
  • Mayu Fujikawa, "Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)

    Mayu Fujikawa, "Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)
    Dec 19 2025
    In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Japan sent its first diplomatic delegations to visit the popes and dignitaries of Europe. European artists portrayed these historic ambassadors—the Tenshō embassy (1582–90) and the Keichō embassy (1613–20)—in numerous oil paintings, frescoes, drawings, and prints. Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025) by Dr. Mayu Fujikawa analyzes these images—including newly discovered and lost works—within their cross-cultural and diplomatic contexts. Drawing on extensive and geographically expansive archival research, art historian Dr. Fujikawa investigates how the embassies were received and either assimilated or differentiated at European courts. She demonstrates how delegates’ gifts to their hosts, their Europeanized kimonos, and the Western clothes they wore while traveling functioned as tools of soft diplomacy. Dr. Fujikawa also shows how printed materials functioned much as news does today, promoting the embassies widely and conveying information about the guests and their striking physical appearance. Envisioning Diplomacy offers a fascinating look at the political, social, and cultural meanings of visual materials created around the embassies and should be of great interest to scholars, students, and general readers interested in early modern European art and history, costume history, diplomatic history, and Japanese and global studies. 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. 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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    56 m
  • Tullia d'Aragona, "The Wretch, Otherwise Known As Guerrino" (Iter Press, 2025)

    Tullia d'Aragona, "The Wretch, Otherwise Known As Guerrino" (Iter Press, 2025)
    Dec 15 2025
    This is an unabridged bilingual, fully annotated edition of Tullia d’Aragona’s epic poem The Wretch. This mid-century epic reflects the many historical and religious changes taking place in the first half of the sixteenth century in Europe and the burgeoning literary debates following the publication of another Italian epic poem, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. The Wretch recounts the adventures of Guerrino, a nobleman captured by pirates as an infant and sold into slavery. His famous quest in search of his parents and his identity involves abductions, same-sex seductions, and skirmishes with fantastical beasts as he travels through Europe, Turkey, Africa, India, Arabia, and the Purgatory of St. Patrick. The poem occupies an important position in the development of the prestigious epic genre, the highest step on the ladder to literary recognition and fame, and Tullia’s work paved the way for the epics of other women writers in subsequent decades. Edited by Julia L. Hairston, with an Introduction by Julia L. Hairston, translated by John C. McLucas Kate Driscoll is Assistant Professor of Italian and Romance Studies at Duke University. She is a specialist of early modern Italian and European literary and cultural history, with interests in women’s and gender studies, performance history, and the cultures of diplomacy and reception. Her monograph, Tasso and Women Readers: Literary Hospitality in Early Modern Italy (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press) won the 28th annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies. Email: kate.driscoll@duke.edu. 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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    51 m
  • James Lacey, "Rome: Strategy of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)

    James Lacey, "Rome: Strategy of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
    Nov 29 2025
    From Octavian's victory at Actium (31 B.C.) to its traditional endpoint in the West (476), the Roman Empire lasted a solid 500 years -- an impressive number by any standard, and fully one-fifth of all recorded history. In fact, the decline and final collapse of the Roman Empire took longer than most other empires even existed. Any historian trying to unearth the grand strategy of the Roman Empire must, therefore, always remain cognizant of the time scale, in which she is dealing. Although the pace of change in the Roman era never approached that of the modern era, it was not an empire in stasis. While the visible trappings may have changed little, the challenges Rome faced at its end were vastly different than those faced by Augustus and the Julio-Claudians. Over the centuries, the Empire's underlying economy, political arrangements, military affairs, and, most importantly, the myriad of external threats it faced were in constant flux, making adaptability to changing circumstances as important to Roman strategists as it is to strategists of the modern era. Yet the very idea of Rome having a grand strategy, or what it might be, did not concern historians until Edward Luttwak wrote The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third forty years ago. Although the work generated much debate, it failed to win over many ancient historians, in part because of its heavy emphasis on military force. By mostly neglecting any considerations of diplomacy, economics, politics, culture, or even the changing nature of the threats Rome faced, Luttwak tells only a portion of what should have been a much more wide-ranging narrative. For this and other reasons, such as its often dull presentation, it left an opportunity for another account of the rise and fall of Rome from a strategy perspective. Through a more encompassing definition of strategy and by focusing much of the narrative on crucial historical moments and the personalities involved, Rome: Strategy of Empire (Oxford UP, 2022) promises to provide a more persuasive and engaging history than Luttwak's. It aims not only to correct Luttwak's flaws and omissions, but will also employ the most recent work of current classical historians and archeologists to present a more complete and nuanced narrative of Roman strategic thinking and execution than is currently available. 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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    1 h
  • Sarah Ruden, "Vergil: The Poet's Life" (Yale UP, 2023)

    Sarah Ruden, "Vergil: The Poet's Life" (Yale UP, 2023)
    Nov 28 2025
    The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the process of creating this epic poem, Vergil (70–19 BCE) became a living legend. But the real Vergil is a shadowy figure; we know that he was born into a modest rural family, that he led a private and solitary life, and that, in spite of poor health and unusual emotional vulnerabilities, he worked tirelessly to achieve exquisite new effects in verse. Vergil’s most famous work, the Aeneid, was commissioned by the emperor Augustus, who published the epic despite Vergil’s dying wish that it be destroyed. In Vergil: The Poet's Life (Yale UP, 2023), Sarah Ruden, widely praised for her translation of the Aeneid, uses evidence from Roman life and history alongside Vergil’s own writings in an endeavor to reconstruct his life and personality. Through her intimate knowledge of Vergil’s work, she evokes the image of a poet who was committed to creating something astonishingly new and memorable, even at great personal cost. Benjamin Phillips is an MA student in History at Ohio University. His primary field is Late Antique Cultural and Intellectual History. 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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    1 h y 6 m
  • Christina Jerne, "Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

    Christina Jerne, "Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
    Nov 19 2025
    For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Dr. Jerne details a particular aspect of mafia activities: providing cash relief and other forms of patronage to individuals and groups. Her research shows how activism has evolved to imitate this sustaining role. Activists are increasingly challenging mafia control both by creating alternative economies—from producing food that interrupts mafia labor practices to organizing tourism that supports anti-mafia hospitality—and by subversively adopting business tactics similar to the mafia’s to compete with their social influence and legitimacy. Exposing the political implications of this mimetic opposition, Dr. Jerne points to its potential impact on crime prevention and criminalization, both in Italy and globally. Opposition by Imitation shows how these modern-day Robin Hoods are redefining collective action, taking what was controlled by the mafias and returning it to the collective. This contentious economic turn, against the backdrop of broader social movements, reveals significant political possibilities afforded by imitative opposition. 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. 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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    57 m
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