Daily Life in Venice: A History of Material Culture

FAIN: FB-50152-04

Joanne M. Ferraro
San Diego State University (San Diego, CA 92182-0001)

I propose during the 2004-2005 NEH Fellowship year to complete my research and write a book-length manuscript aimed at a broad audience of students, scholars, and general readers of the humanities. The work discusses Venetian responses to the material world created by networks of trade and immigration. It spans the period between the Fourth Crusade and the end of the Venetian Republic (1204-1797) but concentrates on the better documented period after 1500. The book will illuminate the relationship between culture and economic exchange from two points of view: 1) how material goods from many different parts of the world shaped both individual and collective identities; 2) how the demand for consumer goods in Venice was culturally constructed. Taking inspiration from Braudel's Structures of Everyday Life, my analysis includes food, drink, medicine, and textiles, and examines the ways in which their consumption shed light on the attributes of class, gender, and ethnicity.