Center for 21st Century Universities

In 1534 in the noble convent of San Geminiano in Modena, sister Bellencini called sister Fontana a whore during a fight over the appointment of a chaplain. One chronicler disapprovingly noted: “these bad women are spreading throughout the city the great factionalism that is between them.” This observation was not hyperbolic; this particular conflict between the nuns of two noble families was the genesis of a vendetta that shaped the fate of Modenese politics. Beginning with a discussion of the beginning of the vendetta and the sources, amongst which is a nun’s diary chronicling vendetta and factional politics, this paper will explore nuns’ roles in vendettas, including their roles as observers, intercessors, and instigators. This leads us to the questions: What elements of factional violence are being obscured, making women’s agency in violent conflicts seem negligible or one-dimensional? How does rethinking the role of gender complicate extant paradigms on violence?

This course will compare women's lives in Premodern Europe and Colonial Latin America from 1350-1700. The goal of this course is twofold; the first goal is to provide a basic historical understanding of the experience of women in the two regions during this critical time of state-formation and colonization. The second goal is to elucidate the various factors which structured women's lives in the pre-modern period. Since the issues for women presented in the two regions are similar and yet different, a comparative approach to women's lives will help us ask and answer various questions about personhood, gender, sexuality, and agency and the lived impact of these concepts on women's experience. The focus of the course will be on analyzing and comparing secondary and primary works treating similar themes to foster a broader understanding of similarities and differences in women's lives in the pre-modern world. In particular, we will examine and compare women's roles in society, culture, the economy, and the family in addition to other spheres of action. The course will be divided into two sections. The first section examines women's lives from childhood to death examining various rites of passage along the way including marriage, reproduction, and widowhood. For example, we will ask: How did the experience of marriage differ among Colonial women and their counterparts in Europe? Are the commonalities greater or are the differences? Was marriage a universal experience which structured women's lives in similar ways in or a particular one dependent upon context? By exploring these issues via juxtaposition and comparison of the two institutions, we are able elucidate the frameworks and ideas which structured women's lives. The second part of the course takes the comparison one step further by examining the various roles women played within and outside the family. We will analyze how they earned a living, how women explored the various options open to them beyond wife and daughter, and the lives of women who lived on the fringes of society. By examining these themes and structures, we will come to a greater understanding of personhood and gender in the pre-modern world.

What is a Riot grrl? Why are heavy metal fans overwhelmingly depicted as male? Why is gangsta rap often accused of misogyny? What statement exactly was David Bowie trying to make with Ziggy Stardust? This ENGL 1101 course explores the intersections of gender, genre, and music both as consumed and performed. Using WOVEN, written, oral, verbal, electronic, and nonverbal principles of communication, you will produce your own reflections and examinations of gender in music performance, consumption, audience reception, and marketing in modern day music. In particular, this course is designed to build upon your critical thinking and evaluative skills, help you develop a research toolbox, aid in honing the principles of effective argumentation and rhetoric, and reinforce best practices for effective writing at the college level. Using pop culture and gender as an analytical lens, by the end of this course you will be able to evaluate and construct arguments in a variety of modes. You will demonstrate proficiency in the process of articulating and organizing rhetorical arguments in written, oral, visual, and nonverbal modes, using concrete support and conventional language.

Recently, the Italian Renaissance has become a hot topic. TV shows like Showtime's ​ The Borgias​ and game series like Assassin's Creed and Dante's Inferno have brought this era of history to the forefront of popular consciousness outside of world civilization, art history, and history survey college classes. The premise of this class is this: this interest is no accident. As scholars have shown, periods of history tend to become fashionable in popular culture when they speak to our society and have something to teach us. The goal of this class this semester is to examine exactly what the Italian Renaissance may have to teach the digital age by exploring this period of history and its reintroduction into popular consciousness. We will look at how and why this era speaks to our culture using a combination of pop culture and traditional history texts. In particular, this course is designed to build upon your critical thinking and evaluative skills, help you develop a research toolbox, aid in honing the principles of effective argumentation and rhetoric, and reinforce best practices for effective writing at the college level. Using pop culture adaptations of history and literature as an analytical lens, by the end of this course you will be able to evaluate and construct arguments in a variety of modes.​ ​ You will demonstrate proficiency in the process of articulating and organizing rhetorical arguments in written, oral, visual, and nonverbal modes, using concrete support and conventional language. The programmatic expectations for learning are as following:

What happens when you cross a computer scientist with a Jane Austen scholar? Can you use natural language processing (NLP) to understand 14th-century Italian poetry? Does using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) give us insight into patterns of homicide in medieval Europe? Does Network Analysis tell us anything about the friendships of seventeenth-century scientists? These questions are of concern to the larger field of inquiry known as the digital humanities. Digital humanists use computational methods to analyze humanities questions. They build databases, clean data, create tools, build apps, and use drones to take pictures of the inside of churches. Because of the technical component, digital humanities projects not only require the depth of knowledge and research skills required of experts in the humanities, they also require skills like programming, user design, project management, and communicating with clients and stakeholders. Digital humanists need you.

This article looks at the juxtapositions of Italian microhistory and digital spatial history. While microhistory and digital history are in opposition to one another in terms of scale, they have similar aims, particularly a commitment to a methodology whose partial purpose is overcoming the silences of the subaltern and underrepresented in the archive. Digital history can help microhistorians find the exceptional normal in a cache of documents, follow clues, and illuminate the mentalities, particularly the spatial ones, of their subjects.