Elena started following the work of Michael Rocke, Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, Biblioteca Berenson.
Elena started following 2 journals.
Elena started following the work of carla darista, Columbia University, Art History.
Faculty Member, History
Vice Director
About
I completed my PhD in Medieval History at the University of Florence in 1993 with a thesis on the prosopographical analysis of the Sienese government in years 1355-1399; on my previous lauree I worked on electoral systems and on a particular archival “fondo” of a Trecento judge and official.
I also completed a Masters in Gender Studies in 2003, working on the role of the dowry in the fourteenth century, and a short version of it appeared in 2004. I have published on the political, institutional and legal history of the Trecento, on “consilia” by the most important Italian jurist of the fourteenth century, Bartolo da Sassoferrato, and on the seventeenth century legal “repetitiones”. My article "In the Shadow of the Campo: Sienese Women and Their Families (14th-16th Centuries)" appeared in the volume of essays Across the Religious Divide: Women's Properties in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 1300-1800), ed. by Jutta Sperling and Shona K. Wray, published by Routledge in 2010. I taught American undergraduate students courses on “The Black Death and its Aftermath” at IES , Institute for the International Education of Students, in Siena.
My research investigates the ways in which law contributed to the changes that occurred in the Middle Ages. The manner in which the Justinian Corpus iuris civilis, canon law, and feudal and local legislation influenced aspects of social and economic life --such as trade, sumptuary customs, citizenship rights, inheritances, and political careers-- lies at the very core of my research. Most recently I began to explore the history of women through this legal and institutional framework, revealing how political and economic codes have defined the role of women within familial ambits.
My forthcoming book provisionally entitled "Sienese Women in Troubled Times (1450-1559)" focuses on the pivotal role played by women in the last century of the Sienese Republic, during Cosimo I de’ Medici’s siege, and following the annexation of Siena by the Florentine Duchy. Documents that I found in Tuscan archives reveal stories of wives, daughters and sisters who, in dire times, became heads of households, entrepreneurs, and even political advisors, while still providing aid to their exiled kin. Many of these actions triggered ex novo laws in favor or against women, partly based on the modification of local legislation, and partly based on the reinterpretation of the ius commune.
I have presented papers at the Biennial Conference of Sarasota, Florida in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010; at the Renaissance Society of America in Cambridge 2005; Miami 2007; Chicago 2008, Los Angeles 2009, Venice 2010. In 2008 I gave the Annual Bertie Wilkinson Lecture at the Centre of Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto, whose title was "Florence is not Italy: An Alternative View of Women, Family and Social Ties from Siena".
