Standing at the Crossroads: Doubt in Early Modern Italy (1500-1560)

Project Information

BIVIUM

Grant agreement ID: 792225

DOI

10.3030/792225

Project closed

EC signature date 16 March 2018

Start date 3 September 2018

End date 2 September 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 229 761,00

EU contribution

€ 229 761,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BIVIUM (Standing at the Crossroads: Doubt in Early Modern Italy (1500-1560))

Reporting period: 2020-09-03 to 2021-09-02

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

At the end of the fifteenth century and in the first decades of the sixteenth century, extraordinary events drastically altered the course of Italian and European history. The discovery of the ‘New World’, the outbreak of the ‘wars of Italy’, that of the so-called Reformation, the conflicts with the Ottoman empire, the Sack of Rome (1527), caused a sense of anxiety and bewilderment. What people had been holding true for centuries suddenly became outdated, unreliable, unsatisfying. What were the consequences of such tumultuous events on the mindset of Italian people? This project explores a new phenomenon, the rise of a series of discourses on, and descriptions of doubt. It moves the focus from individuals voicing doubts to how, when and why doubt became a cultural object. Moving away from traditional studies on skepticism or unbelief, this projects explores the polysemic and multifaceted notion of doubt, an intellectual habit but also a condition affecting the mind, the soul, and the body. When dealing with early modern uncertainty scholarship has explored a restricted canon of outstanding, generally male-authored philosophical and theological works. BIVIUM explores a more diverse set of sources in the vernacular in the attempt to retrieve the voices of women and of the uneducated. Third, it adopts an interdisciplinary methodology that brings together literature, religious history, and cultural history. The early sixteenth century experienced for the first time major issues of connectivity: a global world made European acquainted with previously unknown cultures and faiths. The Reformation brought in a religious divide whose traumatizing effects caused issues of religious tolerance and coexistence. The printing press began to spread news that in many cases were not reliable and could be manipulated. Wars caused economic stagnation and epidemics. Many of these issues call for comparison between the early sixteenth century and our own world. Understanding the intellectual and emotional response to doubt of sixteenth-century may allow us to better understand and handle our responses to an age of doubt. This project is a cultural history of doubt unravelling the complexity of this notion, its uses, its goals, and its strategies within different cultural contexts, thus retrieving a fundamental category of European cultural identity.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the outgoing phase I attended a series of conferences and lectures organized by the Department of Italian, University of Toronto (= UoT), in particular the series of “Emilio Goggio” Lectures, and by the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies (= CRRS). I attended the annual Erasmus Lecture, the Early Modern Interdisciplinary Graduate Forum (= EMIGF), and the colloquia organized on a regular basis by the CRRS. These conferences have allowed me to familiarize with several methodological approaches to early modern studies, from social history to art history, from the history of emotions to the history of literature. I also attended lectures by outstanding scholars such as Brian Stock and Natalie Zemon Davis. The attendance to the “Making Stories in the Early Modern World” conference in November 2019 in particular has been fruitful in giving important insights into the methodology of microhistory and global history. I met on a regular basis with my supervisor in Toronto, prof. Nicholas Terpstra and with his graduate students receiving important feedback.

I attended workshops organized by the Centre for Teaching Innovation and Support of the UoT on equity and power in the classroom and on how to draft a successful dossier for job applications. I attended a workshop on the use of sources organized by the Graduate Center for Academic Communication and a workshop on drafting and submitting a book proposal organized by the Department of History, UoT, led by acquisitions editors of Cornell University Press.

I have organized three panels at the 2019 Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (= RSA) titled “Cultures of Doubt in Early modern Europe”.
I have organized two panels at the 2021 RSA Annual Meeting on “Doubt, Science, and Empirical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe” and on “Doubting Women: Women as Agents of Doubt in Early Modern Europe”. This last panel was not originally included on the DoA.

Publications:

"Allegorie e personificazioni del dubbio nell'Italia del Cinque e Seicento" in print in the volume "Le doute dans l'Europe moderne", forthcoming with Brepols.
Review essay on "Early Modern Uncertainty" A Cultural Revolution and a Historiographical Turn" published in “Exemplaria. Medieval, Early Modern, Theory”.
Final monograph:currently under review for the publisher Legenda (Cambridge).

Edited volume: "Doubting Women: Women as Agents of Doubt in Early Modern Italy" under contract with Amsterdam University Press.
Article:"Advertising Doubt in Early Modern Italy", tbp on "Renaissance Studies". The article has passed the first round of reviews and is currently being examined by external reviewers.

Talks:
Early Modern Graduate Forum, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, UoT (04/2019); Department of French and Italian and the Renaissance Studies Program, Indiana University, Bloomington (02/2021); Group for Early Modern Studies (GEMS), University of Ghent (02/2021); UoT (Emilio Goggio chair in Italian Studies / Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium. 03/2021).

I have created a website for the project.
A video presentation of my research has been uploaded onto the YouTube Channel of my supervisor

I have released an interview on my project on the newspaper "Corriere Canadese" (February 20, 2019)
The project has been advertised on the Department's webpage

Science Gallery Venice (= SGV): Introduction for the catalogue of the exhibition "Illusion" organized by the SGV network. On September 10, 2020 I presented my research and dialogued with Matteo Lonardi, a director of Virtual Reality Movies and Michel Reilhac, curator of the Virtual Reality section of the Biennale. The event has been included in the 2020 ArsElectronica international festival. The event, titled “The Art of Doubt”, took place on the occasion of the 77 Venice Film Festival.

The results of the project have gone beyond what I had set in the DoA: the edited volume for Amsterdam UP was not originally included in it. The volume has allowed me to add to my project a strong gender perspective and reach out to a new scholarly audience. The event organized with SGV in turn has allowed me to interact with international artists, putting my research on early modern Italy in dialogue with contemporary art and with present social challenges. The presentations I gave in Europe and in North America (although, unfortunately, mostly in remote) allowed me entertain fruitful conversations with social and religious historians as well as with historians of art and literature.

Finally, I was able to secure a tenure-track position at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). The prestige of the MSC fellowship has positively impressed the faculty in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project is increasingly intertwining with the current cultural debate: doubt is at the heart of the debate on "fake news"; of ethichal debate concerning Artificial Intelligence (doubt and choice, moral uncertainty); of criticism of scientific turth by larger section of public opinion,

Allegory of Doubt