Renaissance Society Of America

The Spring 2026 issue (79.1) of Renaissance Quarterly has been published online and includes the following: The 2025 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture “The Weight of this Sad Time”: Presentism, Eco-Politics, and Early Modern Studies Daniel Vitkus Articles Patronage and Social Change in Early Netherlandish Painting (ca. 1400–1550) Leen Bervoets and Frederik Buylaert Communicative Freedoms and Postal Coverage: The Multispatial Circulation of Correspondence Between Spain and America (1492–1560) Nelson Fernando González Martínez Epigrams on the Castrated Martial: From Joseph Scaliger to John Donne and Beyond Thomas Matthew Vozar Learning to See: The Visualizing Instruments of Francis Bacon’s Interpretation of Nature Sorana Corneanu The Gender of George Herbert’s Love Gabriel Bloomfield Featured Reviews The Queen of Scots / La Reina Di Scotia. Federico della Valle. Ed. and trans. Fabio Battista. Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library. Reviewed by Annachiara Mariani Eufrasia Burlamacchi. Loretta Vandi. Illuminating Women Artists: Renaissance and Baroque. Reviewed by Sarah R. Kyle Culinary Texts in Context, 1500–1800: Manuscript Recipe Books in Early Modern Europe. Sarah Peters Kernan and Helga Müllneritsch, eds. Food Culture, Food History Before 1900. Reviewed by Anita Guerrini The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea. John Coakley, Nathan Kwan, and David Wilson, eds. Maritime Humanities, 1400–1800. Reviewed by Arazoo Ferozan Cervantine Blackness. Nicholas R. Jones. Iberian Encounter and Exchange, 475–1755 11. Reviewed by Jenny Jihyun Jeong This issue also features 100 book reviews. Click the link in bio. #renaissance #baroque #renaissancestudies #netherlandishpainting #epigrams

The Renaissance Society of America’s Graduate Student Advisory Committee is delighted to announce our upcoming series of Online Graduate Student Lightning Talks, to be held on June 4, 2026. This year, we invite student participants to explore the theme of “Fragments.” Please see our website, RSA(dot)org, and go to “News” for more information.   Over the course of our Online Graduate Student Lightning Talks, we invite participants from across disciplinary backgrounds to explore “fragments” as both a material condition and analytical framework. Some possible themes that talks may focus on (but are by no means limited to) include the following:   —Fragmentary forms in the Renaissance   —Fragmentary evidence and Renaissance reception   —Fragments in Renaissance networks —Fragments in Renaissance research   —Fragments in Digital Renaissance: —Fragments and the Body   More details on the RSA website under “News.” Abstracts of 150 words are due by May 1, 2026. Please use the submission form found on the RSA (dot) org website under “RSA News.” Click on the news story “CfP: Graduate Student Lightning Talks.” Submit your name, email address, affiliation, proposed title, and short abstract. Participants will be notified by May 15, 2026. The talks will take place on June 4, 2026.   Best of luck! The Graduate Student Advisory Committee Shanti Giovannetti-Singh Lottie Page Serena Strecker Camille Uglow Yixin Alfred Wang   Image from The Met: Title: Fragment of a Tapestry or Wall Hanging Date: ca. 1420–30 Geography: Made in Basel, Switzerland Culture: Upper Rhenish Medium: Wool and linen Classification: Textiles-Tapestries Credit Line: The Cloisters Collection, 1990 Object Number: 1990.211 Curatorial Department: Medieval Art and The Cloisters #renaissance #earlymodern #earlymodernhistory #fragments

We are delighted to welcome you to RSA San Francisco 2026! The conference begins Thursday, February 19, at 9:00 a.m. and will conclude on Saturday, February 21, at 7:30 p.m. Attendees will receive a newsletter each morning of the conference, highlighting all of the important information for that day. From where to find complimentary coffee to obtaining Wi-Fi passwords, please keep an eye on your email inbox! Be sure to stop by the Registration Desk in the Hilton San Francisco Union Square to pick up your name badge. RSA Registration Desk details: Thursday: 7:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Friday: 8:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Saturday: 8:30-2:30 p.m. Don’t forget to check your email each morning of the meeting. Happy conferencing! #rensa26 #earlymodern #renaissance #rsaorg

We are thrilled to announce that the Winter 2025 issue of Renaissance Quarterly (vol. 78.4) has been published online. Click the link in bio to view the following: Articles * Resource Landscapes: Introducing a Heuristic Framework
Tina Asmussen and Renée Jennifer Raphael * Of Plants and Providence: Assessing Drugs, Difference, and Divine Will in Timothy Bright’s The sufficiencie of English medicines
Melissa Reynolds * Lady Anne Southwell, Scripture, and the Landscape of Early Modern Ireland
Danielle Clarke * The Mountain Magus: Mining and Resource Landscapes in the Early Modern Venetian Mainland 
Gabriele Marcon * “Estrema Ruina”: Rice and Its Ambiguities in the Sixteenth-Century Duchy of Milan
Lavinia Maddaluno * Giovanni Botero and the Commercial Waterscape
Caroline Elizabeth Murphy * Writing Colonial Resource Landscapes: Ecologies of Work, War, and Race in A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596) and Milicia y descripción de las Indias (1599) 
William Rhodes * A Patchwork Columbian Exchange: Ecological Imperialism, Animals, and the Relaciones Geográficas of New Spain  
Mackenzie Cooley Featured Reviews * The Art of Cooking, Pie Making, Pastry Making, and Preserving: Arte de Cocina, Pastelería, Vizcochería y Conservería. Francisco Martínez Montiño. Ed. Carolyn A. Nadeau. Culinaria: Food for Thought, Food for Pleasure, Food for Change. 
Reviewed by Daniela Gutiérrez Flores * The Brush of Insight: Artists and Agency in the Mughal Court. Yael Rice. 
Reviewed by Jyotsna G. Singh * Patterns of Plague: Changing Ideas about Plague in England and France, 1348–1750. Lori Jones. 
Reviewed by Ori Ben-Shalom * Late Medieval and Early Modern Libraries: Knowledge Repositories, Guardians of Tradition and Catalysts of Change. Outi Merisalo, Nataša Golob, and Leonardo Magionami, eds. 
Reviewed by Kathleen M. Comerford * Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico. Andrew Laird. 
Reviewed by Weiao Xing  And 79 book reviews #renaissance #earlymodern @cambridgeuniversitypress

The preliminary program for our 2026 Annual Meeting is available to view and registration is open. We hope you will join us February 19–21, 2026, at our 72nd Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. We have an exceptional conference planned, with 450 sessions to be held at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Please click the link in bio to access all of the hyperlinks to the conference.   The regular conference rate is $270 for RSA members and $145 for members who qualify for reduced registration. RSA members who are students, independent scholars, adjunct instructors, part-time instructors, unemployed no n-students, and retired scholars are invited to use the promotional code REDUCEDREG during checkout to register for the conference at the reduced rate of $145. More information about registration rates and conference details can be found on our website. Please note that starting Friday, January 16th, the late registration rate of $300 (or $160 for students, independent scholars, adjunct instructors, part-time instructors, unemployed non-students, and retired scholars with the promotional code REDUCEDREG) will apply.   At the conference, you can choose from hundreds of sessions to attend including paper panels, roundtables, seminars, and workshops. There will be many opportunities to network, as well. The Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture will be presented by Kate van Orden, who is Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of Music at Harvard University.   All sessions will be held in the hotel, just two blocks from Union Square and within walking distance of the city’s acclaimed Chinatown. San Francisco’s notable cultural institutions include the Legion of Honor, the de Young Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the libraries and museums at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Other attractions and historical sites include Mission San Francisco de Asís, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, the Victorian and Edwardian houses on “Postcard Row,” Fisherman’s Wharf, and the city’s famed cable cars.    We do hope to see you in San Francisco! Email us at rsa(at)rsa(dot)org with questions. #renaissance #rensa26

We are delighted to announce that the Fall 2025 issue of Renaissance Quarterly (vol. 78.3) has been published online. Click the link in bio to view the following: Articles Artmaking as Embodied Knowledge Shaped by Disability: The Case of Hendrick Goltzius
Or Vallah Gian Andrea Doria and his Real: Mediterranean Hegemony, Shipbuilding Complexities, and the Construction of the New Spanish Flagship Galley (1586–89) 
A. Jorge Aguilera-López E duobus elige: The Becket “Devise” and Elizabeth I’s Spanish Dilemma
Ana Sáez-Hidalgo Temporal Landscapes: Origins and Aspects of Vesuvian Iconography in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 
Domenico Laurenza Featured Reviews Italy by Way of India: Translating Art and Devotion in the Early Modern World. Erin Benay. Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History. London: Harvey Miller, 2021. 
Reviewed by Milena Viceconte  Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade: English Stationers and the Commodification of Botany. Sarah Neville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.    
Reviewed by Karen Reeds Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639. Sinem Arcak Casale. Silk Roads. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023.
Reviewed by Rao Moshin Ali Noor A Widow’s Vengeance after the Wars of Religion: Gender and Justice in Renaissance France. Tom Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.         
Reviewed by Susan M. Baddeley The Librarian’s Atlas: The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain. Seth Kimmel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024. 
Reviewed by Fernando Rodríguez-Mansilla  And 75 book reviews #renaissance #earlymodern @cambridgeuniversitypress

Support Renaissance studies by supporting our student colleagues! We have an opportunity to support the next generation of scholars at a time of infinite intellectual possibility and significant financial pressure. While costs continue to rise, your gift will foster exciting conversations and cultivate new research about the early modern world.   For $100, you can sponsor a graduate student’s one-year RSA membership. You may provide the names of specific students or simply sponsor one or more students in need. Students who are already members will be notified that their RSA membership is being extended by twelve months. Students who are not members will be notified of their gift and invited to join.   Click the link in bio for more information and to pay online. Thank you in advance for your generosity. #renaissancestudies #earlycareerscholars #earlymodernstudies

We are thrilled to announce that the Summer 2025 issue of Renaissance Quarterly (vol. 78.2) has been published online. Click the link in bio to view the following: Articles * Dialogic Depositions: Finding Black Women’s Presence in Spanish Colonial Legal Records 
Karen B. Graubart * Remnants of Another Time: Prince Henry Stuart and the Doubtful Temporalities of Poetry Books 
Andrew Mattison * Of Sunflowers and Shot Silk: Mutability and Meaning in Early Seventeenth-Century Madrid 
Brendan C. McMahon * Milton and the Space Age: Bright Universes, Dark Universes, and the History of the Cosmological Imagination 
Vladimir Brljak Featured Reviews * Seeing Race Before Race: Visual Culture and the Racial Matrix in the Premodern World. Ed. Noémie Ndiaye and Lia Markey. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2023. 
Reviewed by Angela Zhang  * The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Paul M. Dover. New Approaches to European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 
Reviewed by Matthew Z. Heintzelman * Tudor Networks of Power. Ruth Ahnert and Sebastian E. Ahnert. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 
Reviewed by Alessandra Petrina  * Blacksmiths of Ilamba: A Social History of Labor at the Nova Oeiras Iron Foundry (Angola, 18th Century). Crislayne Alfagali. Work in Global and Historical Perspective 15. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2023. 
Reviewed by Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh  * Waste Paper in Early Modern England: Privy Tokens. Anna Reynolds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.
Reviewed by Weiao Xing  And 76 book reviews #premodern #europeanhistory #earlymodernengland #milton #earlymodern #renaissance @cambridgeuniversitypress #poetry #law

We are delighted to announce that the spring 2025 issue (78.1) of Renaissance Quarterly has been published online! Click the link in bio to view the following: The 2024 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture  The Renaissance of Encounters and the Renaissance of Antiquities Joan-Pau Rubiés Articles “They are like your Arabs”: Giovanni Villani on Ibn Khaldūn’s Tunis (The Ḥafṣid Civil War) William Caferro and Mohammed Allehbi At First Blush: Race, Rouge, and the Transnational Performance of Turning Red Paul Michael Johnson Selling French: Netherlandish Migrants as Linguistic Brokers in Early Modern Germany (1560–1600)  Alisa van de Haar Grave Robbing as Philanthropy: How Tombs Became Taxable Treasure in Colonial Latin America Jeffrey W. Baron Featured Reviews The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife’s Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant: A Bilingual Edition. Cathy McClive, ed. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series 98. Toronto: Iter Press, 2022. x + 236 pp. $54.95.  Reviewed by Annagiulia Gramenzi  Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World. Leah R. Clark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. xx + 336 pp. $130. Reviewed by Federica Gigante Soweit das Auge reicht Frömmigkeit und Visualität vom Frühmittelalter bis zur Reformation. David Ganz, Esther Meier, and Susanne Wegmann, eds. Berlin: Reimer, 2022. 596 pp. €79.  Reviewed by Gregory Bryda Rethinking Zapotec Time: Cosmology, Ritual, and Resistance in Colonial Mexico. David Tavárez. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022. 448 pp. $50. Reviewed by Carlos Rivas Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature: An Archaeology of Absence. Jonathan Sawday. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. xviii + 574 pp. $45. Reviewed by Benjamin Djain   And 100 book reviews #earlymodern #renaissance #antiquities #transnational #latinamerica #tombs #17thcentury #colonialmexico #renaissanceliterature

The RSA San Francisco 2026 Calls for Papers submission form is now open. RSA members are invited to submit CfPs to organize sessions for our 72nd Annual Meeting being held February 19–21, 2026, in San Francisco, California. The Public Index of Call for Papers is also available to view. Go to the form and the index by clicking on the link in bio. The submission deadline for complete sessions and individual papers is August 15, 2025.   Our conference will be held at the San Francisco Hilton Union Square, just two blocks from Union Square and within walking distance of the city’s acclaimed Chinatown. San Francisco’s notable cultural institutions include the Legion of Honor, the de Young Museum,the Asian Art Museum, and the libraries and museums at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. Other attractions and historical sites include Mission San Francisco de Asís, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, the Victorian and Edwardian houses on “Postcard Row,” Fisherman’s Wharf, and the city’s famed cable cars. Please wait to reserve your hotel room until the RSA has announced its hotel block, at which time we will offer discounted room rates to attendees.   We look forward to receiving your proposals and seeing you next February in the “City by the Bay.” Please reach out to us with questions via email at rsa(at)rsa.org. #RenSA26 #renaisssance #renaissancestudies #earlymodern #earlymodernhistory

We are thrilled to announce that a new issue (77.4) of Renaissance Quarterly has been published online! Click the link in bio to view the following: Articles Giotto and the Oratrix: Maddalena Scrovegni and Her Formation as a Writer in Fourteenth-Century Padua Laura Jacobus Contested Customs: Reinventing Indigenous Authority in Sixteenth-Century Ubaque, New Kingdom of Granada Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez Heiress of Fiction: Marfisa and the Macabre Legacy of Chivalric Ferrara  Kate Driscoll Magdalena, “Deaf and Mute,” Makes Her Roman Will (1590) Thomas V. Cohen Régner précairement: Inventing Precarity in Early Modern France Luke O’Sullivan Featured Reviews Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend. Elizabeth King and W. David Todd. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications, 2023. Reviewed by Carolina Alarcó Gender, Law and Material Culture: Immobile Property and Mobile Goods in Early Modern Europe. Annette Caroline Cremer, ed. London: Routledge, 2021. Reviewed by Elena Brizio Custom, Law and Monarchy: A Legal History of Early Modern France. Marie Seong-Hak Kim. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Reviewed by Raymond A. Mentzer News in Times of Conflict: The Development of the German Newspaper, 1605–1650. Jan Hillgärtner. Library of the Written Word: The Handpress World 90. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Reviewed by Andrew C. Sternhagen Schwenk Magic in Early Modern England: Literature, Politics, and Supernatural Power. Andrew Moore. Politics, Literature, and Film. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023. Reviewed by Kathryn LaFevers Evans And 75 book reviews #renaissance #earlymodern #14thcentury #16thcentury #15thcentury #monarchy #indigenousauthority #magdalena #automation #gender #law #materialculture #magic #england #france #granada @cambridgeuniversitypress

If you’re working in an archive this summer, you could win a free RSA year-long membership! From May 1 to August 31, 2025, the RSA will hold a photo contest to highlight the archives (broadly defined). From museums and libraries to churches and universities, we want to see your summer 2025 archive photos. To enter the contest, simply post your photo on Instagram, tag us @rsaorg , and include the hashtag #rsasummerarchive. If you would like to photograph yourself with an archival document, please confirm that taking photos of documents is permitted in your archive. In addition to receiving a year of free membership at the RSA, the winner and their photo will be highlighted in the September edition of Renaissance News and on the RSA’s website and social media channels. We look forward to seeing your summer work in the archives! #earlymodern #rsasummerarchive #renaissancestudies #renaissance #archives