Rosa Salzberg
My major research interests are urban history and the history of migration and mobility in Renaissance and early modern Europe. My most recent project (MIGROPOLIS, financed by a Marie Sklowdowska Curie Fellowship at the European University Institute, 2016-19) looks at spaces of first arrival for migrants and travellers in Renaissance Venice, such as inns, lodging houses and ferry stations, and examines how they acted as sites of orientation, social and cultural interaction and surveillance points for the local authorities. The first fruits of this research have been published in Urban History and Revue d'historie moderne e contemporaine as well as various book chapters, detailed below.
I also have an enduring interest in the history of communication, and particularly the production and circulation of ephemeral print. A monograph based on my PhD dissertation, entitled Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice, was published by Manchester University Press in 2014. It investigates the way in which the new technology of print infiltrated the lives of people across the entire spectrum of society in the form of cheap printed pamphlets, broadsheets, and fliers, which were sold for very little, posted up and proclaimed, or given out for free. My research suggests how, within the unique cityscape of Venice, print quickly became woven into the matrix of oral and written communication that underpinned urban life.
A key focus of my earlier research - the role of itinerant pedlars and performers who published, performed and sold cheap works in public spaces, acting as disseminators of news, information and entertainment at the intersections of print and orality - has led to several publications in journals including the Italian Studies, The Italianist, Sixteenth Century Journal, Renaissance Studies and Social and Cultural History.
I also have an enduring interest in the history of communication, and particularly the production and circulation of ephemeral print. A monograph based on my PhD dissertation, entitled Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice, was published by Manchester University Press in 2014. It investigates the way in which the new technology of print infiltrated the lives of people across the entire spectrum of society in the form of cheap printed pamphlets, broadsheets, and fliers, which were sold for very little, posted up and proclaimed, or given out for free. My research suggests how, within the unique cityscape of Venice, print quickly became woven into the matrix of oral and written communication that underpinned urban life.
A key focus of my earlier research - the role of itinerant pedlars and performers who published, performed and sold cheap works in public spaces, acting as disseminators of news, information and entertainment at the intersections of print and orality - has led to several publications in journals including the Italian Studies, The Italianist, Sixteenth Century Journal, Renaissance Studies and Social and Cultural History.
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Workshops and Conferences by Rosa Salzberg
History Research Seminar organised by the University of Warwick and Ca’ Foscari
Date and Time: Monday 18th November, 16.30-18.30
Location: Aula Milone, 3rd floor, Palazzo Malcanton Marcorà, Ca’ Foscari
Speakers: Rosa Salzberg (University of Warwick) and Paul Nelles (Carleton University)
Respondents: Giulia Delogu (Ca’ Foscari), Paola Molino (Università degli studi di Padova), Lucio Biasiori (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)
While the pre-modern centuries have long been portrayed as static and self-contained, it is now acknowledged that Europe from the Middle Ages onwards saw increasing flows of people and goods. Movement also connected the continent more closely to other parts of the world. This seminar presents recent work that challenges dominant notions of the ‘fixed,’ immobile nature of pre-modern cultures through study of the inter-connected material, social, and cultural dimensions of mobility. The speakers will present their recent research, on mobility and hospitality in early modern Venice (Salzberg), and on the movement of people, words and objects in the global Jesuit network (Nelles). They will also discuss their forthcoming edited collection which explores how ‘the mobilities paradigm’ is influencing the field of early modern history, through case studies which chart the technologies and practices that both facilitated and impeded movement in diverse spheres of social activity such as language-learning, communication, transport, politics, religion, medicine, and architecture.
The seminar will be held in English.
However, there is still much to know about the practical experience – the physicality and materiality - of mobility in this period; for instance, about the spaces through which mobile people passed (which became important sites of encounter and exchange), the forms of transport they used, the physical, mental and emotional ‘baggage’ that they carried with them. How was access to and experience of mobility shaped by the traveller’s class, gender, religion and age? How did Renaissance authorities, both at city and state level, respond to this mobility, attempting to enable, harness or control it? How, exactly, did mobility facilitate communication and cultural exchange, across and beyond the continent? And how does studying people’s movements shed new light on the great changes of the period, from the transmission of Renaissance culture to Europe’s contact with the rest of the world?
Books by Rosa Salzberg
After defining luxury and greed in their historical contexts, the volume’s chapters elucidate new consumptive goods, from chocolate to official robes of state; they examine how ideas about, and objects of, luxury and greed were disseminated through print, diplomacy, and gift-giving; and they reveal how even the most elite of consumers could fake their luxury objects. A group of international scholars from a range of disciplines thereby provide a new appraisal and vision of luxury and the ethics of greed in early modern Italy.
Articles by Rosa Salzberg
In the sixteenth century, Venice was a dynamic and cosmopolitan city, attracting tens of thousands of migrants who came to stay for shorter or longer periods. In order to settle in the lagoon, newcomers had to obtain the “right to reside”, a right determined by social and community practice as much as by a legal framework. This article explores how the practice and the right changed over the course of the sixteenth century, in a context of political and economic tensions. It analyses what it meant to be “Venetian”, a “resident” or a “foreigner” as one found one’s place within the community of ordinary people who populated the city. It seeks to ascertain how immigrants were identified, individually and collectively, as they settled in the city and sought to access rights, in the context of the establishment of new standardized forms of identification and written procedures of registration adopted by the Venetian government in the period.
performer himself to sell after his show to the public assembled in the piazza or street. This article examines how such themes were expressed in oral and printed forms by looking at a number of popular works from this period that commented on or complained about the growing inequality of Italian society,
the careless prodigality of the rich and the suffering of the poor.
Keywords: orality, print culture, street performance, news, control