Events
The Catherine Frisone Scott Center for Italian Cultural Studies plans a host of events throughout the year, on the UMass Boston campus, at other sites around the city and online. Subscribe to our mailing list to keep current with our calendar!
Upcoming events co-sponsored by the Catherine Frisone Scott Center for Italian Cultural Studies
The UMass Boston Catherine Frisone Scott Center, in collaboration with the UMass Boston History Department, is pleased to invite you to Constructing a Renaissance Pope: Ceremony, Rhetoric, and Authority in the Age of Leo X (1513-1521), a discussion between Elizabeth McCahill and Olivia Weisser (both UMB History) followed by an open conversation with the audience, on Tuesday, October 20, 3:00-4:30pm, in Campus Center 3-3545.
Earlier assessments of Leo X have celebrated him as a knowledgeable aesthete or excoriated him as a prodigal nepotist. Conversely, Prof. McCahill's new study analyses the collaborative efforts of curial officials, humanists and ceremonialists to project papal authority in an era of rapid spiritual, social and political change; it is not a biography but a study of premodern image construction. Weaving together material from diaries, manuals, letters, orations and other humanist texts, the book situates papal image-making within the broader context of Renaissance culture. It argues that the scripted rites on which the papal court spent so much time and money served as tools of persuasion and created a rarefied arena in which power, hierarchy and tradition were continually negotiated. By embedding both rhetoric and ceremony within the geopolitical and cultural landscape of early-sixteenth-century Europe, the book reveals how the curia sought to sustain the illusion of timeless authority even as new technologies, political norms and religious dissent conspired to destabilize the papal role.
Attendance is free to all. We hope to see you on October 20! Attendees seeking disability-related accommodations should please write ItalianCenter@umb.edu before the event.
Earlier assessments of Leo X have celebrated him as a knowledgeable aesthete or excoriated him as a prodigal nepotist. Conversely, Prof. McCahill's new study analyses the collaborative efforts of curial officials, humanists and ceremonialists to project papal authority in an era of rapid spiritual, social and political change; it is not a biography but a study of premodern image construction. Weaving together material from diaries, manuals, letters, orations and other humanist texts, the book situates papal image-making within the broader context of Renaissance culture. It argues that the scripted rites on which the papal court spent so much time and money served as tools of persuasion and created a rarefied arena in which power, hierarchy and tradition were continually negotiated. By embedding both rhetoric and ceremony within the geopolitical and cultural landscape of early-sixteenth-century Europe, the book reveals how the curia sought to sustain the illusion of timeless authority even as new technologies, political norms and religious dissent conspired to destabilize the papal role.
Attendance is free to all. We hope to see you on October 20! Attendees seeking disability-related accommodations should please write ItalianCenter@umb.edu before the event.
Past events sponsored by the Catherine Frisone Scott Center for Italian Cultural Studies
- The Frisone Center faculty bring Cinema Ritrovato On Tour back to The Brattle Theatre
- "Helen and 'Belle': Italy and the Italian Past through American Eyes" with Brian Maxson
- "Fiction on Trial: Philip Roth, Ralph Ellison and Pietro di Donato at Yeshiva (1962)" with William Connell
- "'The Fable is Called Mandrake': Medicine and Medical Lore in Machiavelli's Mandragola" with Catherine Freddo
- The Frisone Center faculty bring a week-long iteration of Cinema Ritrovato On Tour to the Consulate General of Italy in Boston and The Brattle Theatre
- "Imagining the World in the Renaissance" with Carrie Beneš
- "Appearances of the Uninhibited Planet: An Ecosemiotic Approach to the Re-semanticised Landscape of Gianni Celati" with Sara Massafra
- "Portraiture and Identity in the Roman Empire": The Frisone Center faculty give a tour of ancient Roman portraiture at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston
- The Frisone Center faculty co-organize a stop of Cinema Ritrovato On Tour, screening rare and restored films across three days
- “The Face of Migration: Humanizing Global Migration through Storytelling” with Pamela Kerpius
- “When Your Latin Teacher Is a Statue: Marta Marchina (1600-1646) and Pasquino” with Skye Shirley
- The Frisone Center faculty screen Pupi Avati’s 2022 film, Dante, introduced by Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani
- The Frisone Center faculty give a tour of Strong Women in Renaissance Italy at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston
- Lorenzo Buonanno, Shannon McHugh and Eugenio Refini convene Staging the Renaissance: A Conversation with the Authors of Three New Books
- Laurie Nussdorfer presents her forthcoming publication, City of Men: Service and Servants in Baroque Rome, joined by Timothy McCall
- Jessica Maratsos presents her 2022 monograph, Pontormo and the Art of Devotion in Renaissance Italy, joined by Stuart Lingo
- Denis Brotto presents his 2021 documentary Logos Zanzotto, joined by Giovanni Zanzotto
- "Do Black Lives Matter in Italy?" with Angelica Pesarini
- Giulia Bertoluzzi presents her 2018 documentary Strange Fish
- "Dante the Migrant: From Medieval Mediterranean to Kara Walker's Art" with Akash Kumar
- Vittoria Colonna in Verse, Song and Print: A Multimedia Celebration of Ramie Targoff's New Translation
- Shannon McHugh on the impact of Colonna's first publication
- Ramie Targoff on translating Colonna's earliest poetry
- Dramatic readings of three sonnets by Floriana D'Ammora
- Troy Tower on editing as translation
- Original performance of Pietro Vinci's musical arrangement of one of Colonna's sonnets by Brian Kay, sung by Ashlee Foreman
- The Frisone Center faculty give a tour of Titian: Women, Myth & Power at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum
- "Seeing Is Believing? Mario Schifano's Nonfigure" with Aja Martin
- Daniel Maze presents his 2021 monograph Young Bellini
- Music as Critique of Racism and Italian Citizenship Policies: Amir Issaa in Concert and in Dialogue with Akrobatik
- "Neorealism on TV: Italy, Television, and the Search for 'Genuine Food'" with Joseph Perna
- "Wine over Water: Wine Culture in Medieval Italian Literature" with Danielle Callegari
- "Machievelli: Yesterday and Today" with Christopher Celenza
- Deception, Deceit, and Dishonesty in the Early Modern Era: 2017 New England Renaissance Conference at UMass Boston
- Discussion and Reception Inaugurating the Catherine Frisone Scott Center for Italian Cultural Studies in Memory of John B. Frisone
Catherine Frisone Scott Center for Italian Cultural Studies
100 Morrissey Blvd.
Boston, MA 02125