Eric Dursteler (Brigham Young University) 'Rethinking the Renaissance, A Mediterranean Perspective'

Recent decades have seen recurring debates about the viability and relevance of Renaissance history in the globalized, post-national and post-modern world of the twenty-first century. This lecture will situate the history of the Renaissance astride the intersection of two historiographical strands, and in the shadow of two great historians: the nineteenth-century Swiss historian of the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt, and the twentieth-century French historian of the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel. The objective is to suggest how reorienting the Renaissance and situating it within a Mediterranean context has the potential to open new horizons and perspectives on the way we think about this important period, and perhaps contribute to its continued historiographical relevance.

Eric Dursteler works on on gender, religious identity and food in the the early modern Mediterranean. His publications include Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (2006), Renegade Women: Gender, Identity and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean (2011), A Companion to Venetian History (2013), and The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon (2016), co-authored with Monique O’Connell, and In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Ambassadorial Reports on the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (2018). He is the editor of A Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797 (2013) and of News on the Rialto. He is currently working on a book on food and foodways in the early modern Mediterranean.