Curriculum Vitae

The African Sea: Black Mediterranean Culture and Exchange 1500-1800’. Italy, the Mediterranean, and Africa. (Palazzo Venezia/Museo Nazionale Romano. Rome, 6-9 Oct, 2027).

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‘The Dance of the Black Africans: Theorizing the Intermezzo’, Race and Theater: the Intermezzo. (Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Philadelphia, 11-13 Mar, 2027).  Panel organizer.

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‘Religion, Political Subversion, and City-Country Tensions in Laurentian Florence’. (Medici Archive Project Forum. 16 Feb, 2027).

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‘Black Births and Miraculous Whiteness: Diversity, Gender, and Disability in Renaissance Italian Literature (1460-1750)’ and Session Chair, (TextDive Global, Queen Mary Univserity/UNC Chapel Hill. 4 Apr, 2025).

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‘Antislavery as Process: Capuchins in Africa on Slavery’. Early Modern Capuchins in Context:  Spirituality, Culture, and Catholic Reform. (Durham University Center for Catholic Studies/University of Notre Dame, Australia, 7-8 Jul 2026.

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‘Muslim Valences in the Sistine Chapel’, Before Michelangelo: Revisioning Sixtus’ Sistine Chapel, (Australian Catholic University Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Rome. 20 Oct 2025).

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‘Black Births’, Europe and its Global Connections, 1545-1659, (Queen Mary University/U. Budapest. 16 May 2024).

‘Naming Race in the Renaissance’, (Harvard University, Villa I Tatti, Florence. 18 Jan 2024).

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‘Capuchin Missionaries and AfroCatholic Metaphysics: Resisting Race in the Early Modern Black Atlantic’, Christianity and Racemaking in the Early Modern Atlantic World. (King’s College, London. 13 Sep 2023).

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 ‘Capuchins and Transatlantic Antislavery, 1650-1690’, Questioning Slavery: Catholic Perspectives. (University of Trier. 15 Jun 2023).

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 ‘Captivities: Experiences and Institutions of Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean’, (Università di Bologna Dipartimento di Storia, Cultura, Civiltà, Dissertation Workshop, Bologna. 18 May 2023).

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 ‘Missionaries and the Slave Trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, Seventeenth Century’. (Mediterranean Seminar, Florida International and Miami University. 3 Feb 2023).

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 ‘Domination: Early Modern Colonialism, Conquest, and Slavery’, Future of Early Modern Studies (Fédération internationale des sociétés et instituts pour l'étude de la Renaissance, Paris. 9 Dec 2023). Panel commentator.

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‘Naming Race in the Renaissance’, (Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Dublin. 1 Apr 2022).

 ‘Black Moors in Renaissance Florence: Between Islam and Africa’. The Medici Perception of Subsaharan Africa, (Medici Archive Project, Florence. Jun 2022).

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 ‘Transsahara in the Mediterranean: Black Muslims from Bornu in Sixteenth-Century Sicily’. The Black Mediterranean, (MLA Annual Convention, Washington, DC. Jan 2022).

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‘Jews and Blackamoors Washed White: Religion and Race; Mutability and Conversion’. Whiteness in the Early Modern World, (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto, May 2021).

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 ‘From Religion to Race in Early Modern Europe.’ Centring Race in History. (European University Institute; International Centre on Racism, Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, UK, 23 Nov 2020).

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 ‘Black and Unsuitable: Subsaharan Africans and Racial Classification in the Early Modern Mediterranean’. Freedom, Slavery, and Imprisonment in the Middle and the Early Modern Age, (University of Arizona. 21 Nov 2020).

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 ‘From Jewish to Black: The Fortuna of the Letter of Rabbi Samuel and the Crossed Wires of Racial Discourse in Early Modernity’, Defining Race in Early Modernity, (University of Wisconsin-Madison. 2 Oct 2020).

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 ‘Eliding Empire: Missionary Advocates for Africans in the Seventeenth-Century South Atlantic.’  Reimagining Empires, Mellon-Borghesi Conference, (University of Wisconsin-Madison. 10 Apr 2020).

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 ‘Abolition Avant la Lettre: Antislavery Activism in the Luso-Atlantic,1641-1686 and Beyond.’ (Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison. 2 Mar 2020).

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 ‘ ‘Poor Slaves’: Compassion, Slavery, and Antislavery from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.’ Mediterranean Seminar, Emotions, Race, and Ethnicity. (University of Rochester. 21 Feb 2020).

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 ‘On Liberty: Human Rights Discourse in Seventeenth-Century Kongo and the South Atlantic.’ Liberty in Early Modernity Colloquium, (University of Wisconsin-Madison. 18 Oct 2019).

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 ‘Antagonists of Empire: Slavery, Profit, and Italian Capuchins in Kongo, 1641-1686.’ Maritime Missions: Religion, Ethnography and Empires, (German Historical Society, Washington DC. 24 May 2019).

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 ‘Sephardic Diaspora and Ottoman Entanglements in Granducal Florence.’ Jews and State Building in Early Modern Italy. (University of Maryland College Park. 6 May 2019).

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 ‘Global Slaving Circuits and the Mediterranean.’ Mediterranean Seminar. (Brown University. 4 May 2019).

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 ‘Muslim Slaves in Papal Rome.’ Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome, (British School at Rome. 5 Jun 2018).

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‘ ‘O Negroponte’: Military News and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in Florentine Incunabula.’ (Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, New Orleans. 22 Mar 2018).

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 ‘Prolegomena to a Ghetto: Jews in Medici Court Letters’: Early Modern Religious Dissents. Chair, Exploring Generic Hybrids II: Beyond Lyric. (Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Chicago. 30 Mar 2017).

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 ‘Jews and Immigration in Grandducal Tuscany on the Eve of the Ghetto (1571)’; Chair, ‘Transforming the Sacred in the Early Modern Iberian World’, (Global Reformations, Toronto. 29 Sep 2017).

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 ‘Religious Pluralism Avant la Lettre in Florentine Manuscripts.’ (Schoenberg Manuscript Institute Symposium, Philadelphia. 3 Nov 2017).

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Panel Organizer, Hybrid Humanism. ‘Popular Humanism in Laurentian Florence.’ (Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Boston. 1 Apr 2016).

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‘Fifteenth-Century Conflicts Over Observant Reform: The Schismatic Vallombrosans of Florence.’ (Sixteenth Century Society Annual Conference, Bruges. 20 Aug 2016).

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‘Nuns, Virgins, and Demoniacs: Demonic Possession and the Paradoxes of Female Religious Agency in Fifteenth Century Italy.’ (Sixteenth Century Society Annual Conference, Vancouver. 23 Oct 2015).

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‘The Devil in the Renaissance: Diabolization in Early Modern Political Discourse.’ (Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference. Humboldt-Universität Berlin. 27 Mar 2015).

Panel Organizer, Reputation in the Mediterranean. ‘Commenda, Exorcism, and Sodomy: Monastic Reputation in Fifteenth-century Florence.’  (Sixteenth Century Society Annual Conference, New Orleans. 17 Oct 2014).

 ‘Modes of Anti-Semitism in Renaissance Florence.’ (Salo Baron Foundation for the Study of AntiSemitism, Yale University. 25 Oct 2012).

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‘Late Medieval Biblical Piety: Lay Copyist Subscriptions in Vernacular Manuscripts from Florence.” (Renaissance Studies Colloquium. Yale University. 23 Apr, 2012).

‘Vernacular Scripture, Reform, and the Lesser Laity in Quattrocento Florence.’ Conference on Vernacular Bibles & Religious Reform. (KU Leuven. 30 Nov, 2012).

‘Banned Books in The Library of the Accademia Olimpica (Vicenza)’. Italian Academies Conference, 1525-1700, (Royal Holloway University, London. 27 Jun, 2011).