Growing up in an area of Melbourne intensively settled by Italian migrants first sparked Carolyn James’ interest in Italian culture, but it wasn’t until she enrolled at Monash University that she began studying the language. Today Dr James holds one of two Cassamarca lectureships at Monash University. Her position is shared between the School of Historical Studies and the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics.
When the position was established, the main aim was to expand Renaissance Studies, which had long been a particular strength of Monash’s Arts Faculty. Good progress has been made in achieving this. In 2005 a new Master of Renaissance Studies course was introduced and the number of undergraduate units in the field has increased. Since 2006, the first-year survey course, The Renaissance in Europe, is offered at both the Clayton and Caulfield campuses of the university. Furthermore, Italian students now study Renaissance culture as part of their core language component and there is an on-going commitment to expand Italian Studies offerings at the Monash Centre in Prato.
Dr James has made it her personal mission to encourage postgraduate research in Renaissance Studies and to provide emerging scholars with the language and palaeographical skills necessary to enter the field. Early Modern Italian letter collections are the main focus of Dr James’ own research. Together with Dr Antonio Pagliaro of La Trobe University, she is translating and annotating the fourteenth-century correspondence of Margherita Datini, whose husband, Francesco, was the subject of Iris Origo’s well known study, The Merchant of Prato. These letters will appear in the series “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe” series, published by Chicago University Press. The edition will make the letters available in English for the first time and will include letters that have never been published before, as Dr James explains: “Recently a few new letters have been discovered in the Datini archive in Prato, and they aren’t even in the Italian edition”. There are thousands of papers recording the life of the Pratese merchant, his wife and their business associates, so it is hardly surprising that new discoveries can still be made.
Dr James has also embarked on a study of the 3000 letters exchanged between Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga during the twenty-nine years of their marriage (1490-1519) to explore the role of princely consorts in the courtly states of Renaissance Italy. It is thus no coincidence that Dr James also teaches an Honours and postgraduate course entitled “Renaissance Letters and Letter Writing”. This, along with other new courses devised by her, is proving popular with students. Dr James also teaches “Beyond Machiavelli”, a second/third year History unit focusing on sixteenth-century history, and “Studying the Renaissance”, a reading course she designed for the more senior students, will be offered in 2006.
In 2001/2 Dr James was the recipient of a fellowship to Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, where she carried out research on the early career of Isabella d’Este. This period saw her commuting between Villa I Tatti, on the outskirts of Florence, Monash University’s Prato Centre and Mantua, where she needed to consult archival material.
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