Investigation of major topics, genres, and authors in Italian literature and culture of the 15th and 16th centuries.

The seminar considers how thinkers communicated their ideas in the context of the new forms of power, domination, and surveillance that emerged during the Renaissance and early modern period. How did rulers, states, and churches regulate intellectual life? How did dissidents and minorities criticize power? How did they circumvent censorship and avoid persecution? How did intellectuals manage to speak truth to power, or to tailor their ideas to the needs of their patrons, helping to construct social hierarchy and cultural hegemony? We will read a selection of authors and genres, including works by Machiavelli, Erasmus, Elizabeth I, Sarra Copia Sulam, Paolo Sarpi, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes. The close reading of primary sources will be complemented by attention to the technologies through which ideas circulated and the barriers they encountered (print/manuscript/censorship). To facilitate access to rare books and archival material, the entire seminar will be held at the Bancroft Library. During the last month of classes, the seminar will host Filippo De Vivo (https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-filippo-de-vivo), Chair of Italian Culture at Berkeley in Spring 2026, who will share his work on power and communication, considering forms of propaganda and control, and also the arts of communicative resistance by subaltern groups.

Repeat Rules