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Personal History

I hold a PhD in history from Monash University (1991), and have also completed advanced studies in theology through the Melbourne College of Divinity and Corpus Christi College (1972-1980). I began teaching at Monash in 1995, specializing in courses related to the Florentine Renaissance, and Europe more generally. I have made particular contributions as chair of undergraduate and postgraduate coursework committees, establishing agreed graduate outcomes, curriculum reviews, tutor induction and support, and promoting student-centred learning through a variety of assessment, tutorial and lecturing strategies.

I have held fellowships at the European University Institute, Florence, and at 'Villa I Tatti': the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Florence), where in 2007 I was Lila Wallace Readers Digest Visiting Professor. I have spent a period as a visiting scholar at the Istituto per le Scienze Religiose in Bologna.

Other Positions Currently Held
Member of, and occasional Acting Director of, the Monash Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology. Acting Director, first semester 2010.
Secretary and Public Officer, the Australian European University Institute Fellowships Association Incorporated, since 1995.
Acting Coordinator, the advisory board of the Monash Prato Medieval and Renaissance Consortium.
Member of The Monash European and EU Centre.
Member of Council, the Renaissance Society of America.
Member of Council, Mannix College, Monash University.
Chair, the Editorial Board of Europa Sacra, monograph series for Brepols publishing house, Belgium.
Member of the Editorial Board of Medieval Sermon Studies, since 1996.
Member of the Editorial Board of Pacifica, since 1999.
Member of the the comitato scientifico of the Centro di Documentazione del Movimento Ecumenico Italiano, based in Livorno, since 2000.
Member of the comitato scientifico of a consortium of universities (Georgetown University, Kent State University, The Institute at Palazzo Rucellai, Università della Tuscia, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo) responsible for implementing 'Master Universitario di secondo livello: La bottega dello storico. Corso di approfondimento sulla traduzione delle fonti italiane tra basso Medioevo e prima Età moderna'.

Current Research

An interdisciplinary approach to European religious culture lies at the heart of my research, which has encompassed work on textual, oral, performative and visual manifestations of religiosity and cultural identity in Europe, with a particular focus on Italy. My training in both history and theology has enabled me to open up new possibilities for understanding the religious and cultural landscape of Europe across a broad chronological span by combining methodologies and research paradigms from several disciplines. This work has been recognized in a range of invitations from international research institutes and organizations to pursue research, to present papers and seminars, and to publish in international forums.

In a global context where the relationship between political culture, religion and international conflict is becoming increasingly apparent, developing a more sophisticated historical understanding of the generation of religious/cultural ideology in its social context is a central task. My research contributes to three main areas: to the religious and cultural history of Florence during the Renaissance period, to the history of preaching, and to the understanding of religion in the public sphere. Considered broadly, my work addresses the relationship between text and oral communication, the impact of speech in public space, and the generation of fundamental ideas underpinning European and Western civilization such as ‘the common good’, issues of public order, usury/banking, debates on government intervention into social life, the making of citizens, and the creation of theologies and ideologies in response to the social and political exigencies of the historical moment.

My analyses of the role of sermon culture in Florence and of the complex way in which these ideas were expressed and transformed in the public realms of church and piazza have been published in a number of articles and book chapters. My most recent work on the inter-relationship between sermons and frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel (2007) and the Sistine Chapel (currently under review for I Tatti Studies), as well as 'the preaching of magnificence' (2008) provide new approaches to understanding the lived experience of religion, art and oral culture during the Renaissance. Current research includes:

• Completion of a book manuscript Making Magnificence in Renaissance Florence (for Toronto University Press: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies).
• a comparative study of the studia of Renaissance Florence.
• a general book on religion in the Florentine Renaissance from the perspective of sermon studies.
• Two monographic chapters, one on preaching (1400-1957) and one on liturgy at the church of San Lorenzo, contributing to major collaborative book on the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence to be published in the Villa I Tatti monograph series.
• St Antoninus of Florence. The Lenten Sermons, 1427-28, and the Treatise on Preaching. An Edition and Translation (with Prof. Michèle Mulchahey, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto).

Major Publications

Forthcoming
'Painters and the Visual Art of Preaching: The Exemplum of the Fifteenth-Century Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel', I Tatti Studies, vol. 13. (20,115 words)

''Doctrine, when preached, is entirely civic': the generation of public theology and the role of the studia in Renaissance Florence', in Constant Mews and John Crossley (eds.), Communities of Learning, Religious Diversity, and the Written Record 1085-1453 (Turnhout: Brepols, accepted 30/11/2006, forthcoming). (10,052 words).

'Preaching to the Mobs: Space, Ideas and Persuasion in Renaissance Florence', in Nancy Van Deusen and Lenny Koff (eds.), Mobs (Leiden: Brill, accepted 30/01/2007, forthcoming). (8,825 words)

'Bound by Words: Creating belief and community in Renaissance Florence', in Adriano Prosperi and Nichoals Terpstra (eds.), Brotherhood and Boundaries: Lay Religion and Europe's Expansion in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period (Turnhout: Brepols. forthcoming). (6,000 words).

Book
Beyond the Written Word: Preaching and Theology in the Florence of Archbishop Antoninus, 1427-1459, (Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Quaderni di 'Rinascimento'; Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1995), xii + 294pp.

Book Chapters
'Australian clergy in Italy after Vatican II', in Australians in Italy: Contemporary Lives and Impressions, edited by Kent, Bill; Pesman, Ros; Troup, Cynthia. Melbourne: Monash University ePress, 2008, pp. 14.1–14.16. DOI: 10.2104/ai080014.

'Preacher and Ritual in XVth century Florence', in Prédication et Liturgie au Moyen Âge, Nicole Beriou and Franco Morenzoni eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 313-333.

''The womb of memory': Carmelite Liturgy and the Frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel', in The Brancacci Chapel: Form, Function and Setting. Collected Essays of a Symposium Held 6-7 June 2003 in The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, ed. Nicholas Eckstein, Villa I Tatti (Series) (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2007), pp. 177-206.

'The Aural Space of the Sacred in Renaissance Florence', in Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (eds), Renaissance Florence: A Social History(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 376-393 (notes: pp. 584-596).

'The Fear of Schism', in F.W. Kent and C. Zika eds., Rituals, Images, and Words: The Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 37-64.

'Sermons Reflecting Upon Their World(s): A Response to Stephen Morris, Wim Verball, Eve Salisbury, and Emily Michelson', in G. Donavin, C. Nederman, R. Utz (eds.), Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 181-194.

''Leone Superbi': Florentines, Sant' Antonino and his preaching in the Duomo', Atti del VII Centenario di S.Maria del Fiore, eds. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, (Florence: EDIFIR, 2001), pp. 495-209.

"Diversity in Discourse: Archbishop Antoninus' Sermons before Pope, Commune and People,” in Jacqueline Hamess, Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra L. Stoudt, and Anne Thayer (eds.), Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University (Textes et Études du Moyen Age, 9. Louvain-la-Neuve: Federation Internationale des Instituts d'Etudes Médiévale, 1998), pp. 283-307.

'The Preacher and the Holy in Renaissance Florence’, in Beverly Mayne Kienzle (ed.), Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons (Louvain-La-Neuve: Federation Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévale, 1996), pp. 355-370.

Journal Articles
'"You cannot sell liberty for all the gold there is": Promoting good governance in early Renaissance Florence', Renaissance Studies, Early view, 14 October 2009, DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2009.00623.x, pp. 1-26.
'Preaching Magnificence in Renaissance Florence', Renaissance Quarterly 61:2 (2008), 325-369.
'The impact of Preaching in Renaissance Florence: Fra Niccolò da Pisa at San Lorenzo', Medieval Sermon Studies 48 (2004), pp. 29-44.
'Entrepreneurial Ne'er-do-wells: Sin and Fear in Renaissance Florence',Memorie Domenicane, 25 (1994), 245-258.
'Non Parum Laborat Formica ad Colligendum unde Vivat: Oral Discourse as the Context of the Summa Theologica of St. Antoninus of Florence', Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 59 (1989), 89-148.

Areas of Research & Supervision

I am keen to supervise research in relation to culture and belief in Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, with a particular focus on Italy. My specific area of interest is the relationship of theology to society, using sermons, art, ritual and related materials as sources. Beyond this I supervise theses on art and material culture in the Renaissance and early modern periods. I also supervise projects related to the history of theology and the history of the church, including the modern period. I have a major in music history and literature in my primary degree, and so I also supervise projects which include musical culture.

Current postgraduate thesis topics under my supervision include:

PhD

• Finding Space in Early Modern Tuscany: Imagining Place and Constructing Identity in Prato and Montepulciano
• 'John XXIII, Vatican II and the politics of aggiornamento: Angelo Roncalli's analysis of the works of St Charles Borromeo (1538-84) in relation to late 20th century church reform'
• 'Religious Attitudes to Conscription in Australia for the Vietnam War'

MA

• 'Secularisation and The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace (1999)'
• 'Ebionite origins and history'
• 'The Symbolic Power of Silk in Renaissance Florence'
• 'Belief and Politics in Contemporary Australia'
• 'Cognizione del Mondo: containing, enclosing, and preventing an "awareness of the world" within Vincenzo Borghini's L'Ospedale degli Innocenti’

Completed Theses
Peter Price, 'Intellectual Orthodoxy and Political Stability: English Liberal Catholicism and the Politics of Papal Infallibility, 1848-1878'. (PhD 2009, main supervisor)
Frankie Nowicki, 'Ritual, Music, and the Council of Florence: A Cultural Encounter between East and West.' (PhD 2009, joint supervisor)
Jodi Hodge, ' Slender Bonds and Bitter Seas: Mary Magdalen in Mendicant Literature and Imagery' (MA 2006, sole supervisor)
Cecilia Hewlett, 'Rural Communities and Renaissance Florence: Autonomy and Interdependence (1480 – 1550) '. (PhD 2004, associate supervisor)
Garry Deverell, 'The Bonds of Freedom: Vows, Sacraments and the Formation of the Christian Self'. (PhD 2004, joint supervisor)
Wendy Madden, '"Shining Virtue": Veronica Gambara – The Lady of Correggio' (MA 2003, sole supervisor)
Justine Heazlewood, '"Letters are the Leaves, Prayers are the Fruit": Florentine Nuns in th City'. (MA 1999, joint supervisor).
Natalie Tomas, 'The Medici Women: gender and Power in Renaissance Florence'. (PhD 1997, associate supervisor).

Teaching

In addition to my research-based teaching areas in Italian Renaissance History, I have developed units which aim to tap into current cultural issues. Among these are 'Cults and the End of Time', 'Decoding the Da Vinci Code' and more recently, 'Angels and Demons', a unit which explores Rome and the papacy from the time of Constantine to the present. These seek to engage students in a critical appraisal of cultural phenomena from an historical perspective. In 2007 I was presented with the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence and Enhancing the Student Experience.

Undergraduate Courses
HSY1020 - Renaissance Europe
HSY2/3860 - Renaissance in Florence
HSY2/3600 - Cults and the End of Time
HSY2/3045 - Relics and legends: deciphering popular Christianity
HSY3/4690 - Angels & demons: Rome, the papacy, the world

Honours and Postgraduate Courses
HYM4690 - Angels & demons: Rome, the papacy, the world
HSY4840(HYM4/5840) - Text and Community in Renaissance Italy
HSY/HYM4690 - Pageant and Power: A history of the Renaissance Papacy
HSY4330 (HYM4/5330) - Cultures of Devotion in Renaissance Italy
EUR4020 (EUM4/5020) - Religion and Secularism in the Quest for European Integration