Kathryn Taylor (Tennessee): "Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice"

In the sixteenth century, Venice played an outsized role in shaping Europeans’ ideas about the cultural differences existing between the world’s peoples. This presentation will share case studies from Ordering Customs, a history of ethnographic thought in early modern Venice. The book examines the distinctive tradition of ethnographic reporting that emerged in early sixteenth-century Venice and argues that Venetian ethnographic reporting served as the basis for defining religious and cultural difference in new ways. The case studies presented will focus on how ethnographic knowledge was put to use in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice. They suggest that an interest in customs, rituals, and ways of life not only became central in how Venetians sought to apprehend other peoples, it also had a very real impact at the level of policy, shaping how the Venetian state governed populations of religious minorities.

Kathryn Taylor is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, specializing in the religious and intellectual history of early modern Italy and the Mediterranean. They earned their doctorate in history at the University of Pennsylvania. Their first book Ordering Customs was published in 2023 as part of the University of Delaware Press’s series The Early Modern Exchange. Their research interests include Mediterranean diplomacy, religious conversion, and the history of reading and censorship. Their articles have been published in The Sixteenth-Century Journal, The Journal of Early Modern History, and The History of European Ideas.