Address book

Contacts

Staff Structures

VITTORIA FEOLA

Back to the list

Position

Ricercatrice a tempo det. art. 24 c.3 lett. B L. 240/2010

Address

VIA DEL VESCOVADO, 30 - PADOVA

Telephone

0498278550

Notices

The Early modern history exam is a written one. Those wishing to revise and sharpen their writing skills might find the following book rather helpful: A. Mariotti, M. C. Sclafani, A. Stancanelli, Leggere a colori. Scrittura, metodo di studio, temi di cittadinanza (Messina-Firenze, G. D’anna, 2022), pp. 1-228.

THOSE STUDENTS WHO ATTENDED PROF. CANDIANI'S CLASSES BUT WILL SIT MY EXAM: you are kindly required to follow my syllabus. As any other students, you will be have the option of choosing between sitting as attendee or not. You'll have four essay titles to chose from. You will be writing up one essay on a theme of the course. If you attended my classes, you'll be able to refer to the dynamics of education and State building we'll have discussed together; otherwise, you'll be expected to write critically about a given topic on the basis of the mandatory reading list. Either way you'll be able to achieve top grade, only the content will vary.

Office hours

  • Tuesday from 16:30 to 18:30
    at su Zoom
    A partire dal 1 ottobre 2022 il ricevimento avverrà su Zoom di martedì fra le 16:30 e le 18:30 previa richiesta del link.

Research Area

My current research project is entitled “Spies or heretics? Religion and intelligence in the Elizabethan State-building process”. I am grateful to my Department, DiSSGeA, for funding it through a MINI-SID grant.

I work on English and Spanish intelligence networks, 1558-1603 by analysing
1. the links between intelligence, political violence and religion in the increasingly Puritan policies of the Elizabethan Privy Council;
2. English and Spanish political media strategies through the dissemination of fake news both within and without their borders;
3. Alumni networks within the English intelligence systems, including, though by non means exclusively, Paduan ones.

The historiographical fields to which I contribute with my research include the Catholic problem in England, the Spanish black legend, and the management of fake news. They are all fundamental facets of the construction of the early modern State both in England as well as in Spain.

Being a specialist of early modern British history, however, my main focus remains on England, whose history I analyse within her British, European, and Atlantic contexts.


Thesis proposals

I'm happy to supervise theses about one or more of the following topics:

England and the English-speaking worlds: from Henry VIII to Victoria excl. (1500-1837), intelligence, the Catholic problem, uses of the press, antiquarianism, common law and the 'State'; Churches-State relations; violence and liberty; the Scientific Revolution; the British Empire; alchemy, astrology, magic, and medicine; the politics of translations; gender history; Cromwell and the Civil Wars; British colonial history; print and book history; history of collections; England and Europe; history of the Universities; political Puritanism in England and in North-American colonies.

Spain: from Charles I/V to the loss of her colonies; politics and religion; Spanish intelligence; the press; Spanish relationships with the Ottoman empire.

France: from Francis I to Napoleon (1500-1815), State building; wars of religion; Richelieu; history of collections; gender history; the art of conversation and the Republic of Letters; astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine; the criminal law system in the eighteenth century; science and Revolution.

"Italy": from the Reformation to Rome as capital of Italy (1500-1870), sixteenth-century heretics; alchemy, astrology, magic, and medicine, witchcraft; mobility of knowledge and seventeenth-century academies; women and knowledge in the Republic of Venice and in eighteenth-century Tuscany; Cavour; the unification of Italy.