Long-Term Research Fellowships at the American Academy in Rome

FAIN: RA-254178-17

American Academy in Rome (New York, NY 10021-4905)
Mark Robbins (Project Director: August 2016 to present)

16 months of stipend support (1.5 fellowships) per year for three years and a contribution to defray costs associated with the selection of fellows.

The American Academy in Rome requests a grant from the NEH for partial support of six 11-month post-doctoral fellowships in the humanities over three academic years (2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21), and for the costs of the juries convened to evaluate and select winners. These NEH-supported fellowships, which have provided crucial opportunities for humanities scholars since 1976, stand at the heart of the Academy's mission since its foundation in the late 19th century to advance and enrich American scholarship and culture by maintaining a research center in Rome that provides Fellows with the time, space, and stimulating environment to pursue independent study and creative work in the arts and humanities while fostering international and cross-disciplinary exchange. (edited by NEH staff)

Associated Products

Libri De Secta Pythagorica Quattuor (Book)
Title: Libri De Secta Pythagorica Quattuor
Author: Iamblichus
Editor: Denis J.-J. Robichaud
Abstract: In 1484, the Florentine humanist and philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) published the first complete translation of Plato, but his Greek to Latin translations of Iamblichus’s (a Syrian who lived c. 245-325 CE) De secta Pythagorica remain unprinted. They were thought lost before P. O. Kristeller identified their manuscripts, have not been studied extensively, and many recent studies still ignore their existence. They are printed for the first time with the Ficinus Novus series of Nino Aragno Editore (Turin).
Year: 2019
Publisher: Aragno Editore
Type: Translation
Translator: Marsilio Ficino
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Mathematica (Book)
Title: Mathematica
Author: Theon of Smyrna
Editor: Denis J.-J. Robichaud
Abstract: In 1484, the Florentine humanist and philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) published the first complete translation of Plato, but his Greek to Latin translations of Theon of Smyrna’s (fl. first century CE) Mathematica remain unprinted. They were thought lost before P. O. Kristeller identified their manuscripts, have not been studied extensively, and many recent studies still ignore their existence. Mathematica is printed for the first time with the Ficinus Novus series of Nino Aragno Editore (Turin). The edition includes a book-length study of four topics: (i) Greek to Latin translations of philosophy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; (ii) the development of Ficino’s translations; (iii) their place in Ficino’s oeuvre and the history of philosophy; and (iv) a study of the fortune of these works in the Renaissance, especially in scholarly, artistic, and religious communities in Florence and Rome. Ficino’s translations of these texts are the first reintroduction of the largest ancient corpus of Pythagoreanism in the Renaissance.
Year: 2019
Type: Translation
Translator: Marsilio Ficino
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Ficino’s Deification: On Virtue, Transformation, and Union with the Divine,” in Ficino and Pico on How to Become God (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Ficino’s Deification: On Virtue, Transformation, and Union with the Divine,” in Ficino and Pico on How to Become God
Author: Denis J.-J. Robichaud
Abstract: Paper given at Renaissance Society of America’s 65th annual conference.
Date: 03/19/2019
Conference Name: Renaissance Society of America’s 65th annual conference

Bessarione, Dionigi l’Areopagita, e i Platonici (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Bessarione, Dionigi l’Areopagita, e i Platonici
Author: Denis J.-J. Robichaud
Abstract: Invited talk
Date: 12/08/2018
Conference Name: "Vissarion as a Theologian", Istituto Ellenico, Venice, Italy

Liberty, Bondage and Liberation in the Second Millennium BCE (Article)
Title: Liberty, Bondage and Liberation in the Second Millennium BCE
Author: Eva von Dassow
Abstract: Free versus unfree was a fundamental axis of differentiation in ancient Near Eastern societies. Liberty was conceptualized as the power to govern oneself, free from another's domination, thus free to participate in constituting political authority. More concretely, the subject of the state was by definition free, this being the condition of obliging him for duty. Thus the relation between people and polity was predicated on liberty, not servitude as commonly supposed of an area still shackled to the Western ideology of Oriental despotism. I argue that liberty was an operative principle in the organization of ancient Near Eastern polities, basing the case on sources from the Late Bronze Age. The first section sets forth general propositions, and the second puts them in ancient Near Eastern terms. The third and fourth sections examine documents from Ugarit and Emar, two polities under Hittite suzerainty, that illustrate how these principles operated in the lives of individuals. The fifth section examines how they were articulated at the scale of communities, through the lens of the poet(s) who composed the Hurro-Hittite ‘Song of Liberation'. The conclusion draws together the ideas of liberty, bondage and liberation these sources disclose, ideas that remained productive in later ages.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2018.1513246
Primary URL Description: Link to abstract and ability to purchase
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Liberty: an Ancient Idea for the Contemporary World? Ancient Liberties and Modern Perspectives, edited by Valentina Arena. Special issue of History of European Ideas 44/6
Publisher: Routledge

La nationalité en procès : droit international privé et monde méditerranéen (Article)
Title: La nationalité en procès : droit international privé et monde méditerranéen
Author: Jessica Marglin
Abstract: This article uses a single, transnational legal case that played out between Italy and Tunisia in the 1870s and 1880s to tell a truly global history of international law—that is, one that goes beyond the boundaries of the West. Samama v. Samama was a fabulously complicated case that dragged on in Italian courts for almost a decade. The crux of the legal arguments concerned the nationality of Nissim Samama, a Jew born in Tunis; Samama’s nationality, in turn, would determine which legal system regulated his estate. The Italian Civil Code enshrined respect for the national law of a foreigner, but such foreigners were presumed to be Western. A case involving the national law of Tunisia and the status of Jews called the very foundations of the international legal system into question. In putting Samama’s nationality on trial, the case opened up debate over fissures in the emerging theory of international law: How could non-Western states like Tunisia fit into an international legal order? How did Islamic law intersect with international law? What was the status of Jewish nationhood in a world increasingly based on exclusive nationalities? The Samama case offers access to the voices of European international lawyers debating the ambiguities of their field, as well as those of Maghrebis articulating their own vision of international law. The resulting arguments exposed tensions inherent to an international legal system uncomfortably balanced between universalism and Western particularism.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/ahss.2018.111
Primary URL Description: Link to abstract
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales
Publisher: Editions EHESS, published online by Cambridge University Press

Jews and the Mediterranean (Book)
Title: Jews and the Mediterranean
Author: Multiple
Editor: Jessica Marglin
Editor: Matthias Lehmann
Abstract: What does an understanding of Jewish history contribute to the study of the Mediterranean, and what can Mediterranean studies contribute to our knowledge of Jewish history? Jews and the Mediterranean considers the historical potency and uniqueness of what happens when Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi Jews meet in the Mediterranean region. By focusing on the specificity of the Jewish experience, the essays gathered in this volume emphasize human agency and culture over the length of Mediterranean history. This collection draws attention to what made Jewish people distinctive and warns against facile notions of Mediterranean connectivity, diversity, fluidity, and hybridity, presenting a new assessment of the Jewish experience in the Mediterranean.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://iupress.org/9780253047984/jews-and-the-mediterranean/
Primary URL Description: Book main page on university press.
Access Model: Available for purchase
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 978-0253047939
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Tearing Plato to Pieces: Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonism (Article)
Title: Tearing Plato to Pieces: Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonism
Author: Denis J.J. Robichaud
Abstract: This article considers Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s understanding of the history of Platonism in his Examen vanitatis. It analyzes his sources and methods for understanding the history of philosophy—genealogical source criticism, historiographical analysis, and comparative history—and argues that his approach is shaped by anti-Platonic Christian apologetics. It documents how Gianfrancesco Pico closely studies Marsilio Ficino’s and his uncle Giovanni Pico’s understandings of Platonism and its history, and how his contextualization of their work within the broader history of Platonism is part of a larger endeavour to turn the page and even close the book on this chapter of the Quattrocento. Although neither Ficino nor Gianfrancesco finds universal agreement among ancient Platonists, Ficino explains their history as one of inquiry and interpretation, in which Platonism and Christianity are inexorably united, whereas Gianfrancesco characterizes it as a history of lies and disagreements that threaten Christianity. In trying to protect sacred history, Gianfrancesco Pico helped develop the tools that would eventually critique it.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.7202/1068577ar
Primary URL Description: Link to abstract
Access Model: Subscription Only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Curzio Malaparte, la letteratura crudele: Kaputt, La pelle e la caduta della civiltà europea (Book)
Title: Curzio Malaparte, la letteratura crudele: Kaputt, La pelle e la caduta della civiltà europea
Author: Franco Baldasso
Abstract: Curzio Malaparte is today at the center of an international debate that rediscovers him as a fundamental figure of the European twentieth century. However, in Italy there is still a critical discussion on his intellectual work which, starting from the problematic adhesion to fascism, does not focus only on the scandals of his biography. The volume fills this gap, focusing on the season of his fundamental novels "Kaputt" and "La pelle". From the world conflict to the transition to post-fascism, his idea of ​​"cruelty" is interpreted as a response to the collapse of European civilization and to the failure of the revolutionary ideals merged into totalitarianisms. Malaparte's is in fact an attempt to respond to the sacralization of politics and to the disillusionment of modern utopias, from the dream of social palingenesis to the return of the sacred to the secularized post-war society. The book also examines how his writer's intelligence accompanies his public intellectual populism. A controversial witness of world wars and European genocides, Malaparte offers a radical and tragic interpretation of the biopolitical clash between the destructive power of modern technology and bare life. And it is in this light that, together with the great novels, lesser known works such as the theatrical drama Das Kapital or his only film "The forbidden Christ" are recovered.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.ibs.it/curzio-malaparte-letteratura-crudele-kaputt-libro-franco-baldasso/e/9788843094820
Access Model: Available for purhcase
Publisher: Carocci (Rome)
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-88-430-948
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Christian Charity and Public Hospitals in Early Modern Rome (Book Section)
Title: Christian Charity and Public Hospitals in Early Modern Rome
Author: Carla Keyvanian
Editor: Richard Etlin
Abstract: N/A
Year: 2022
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Title: The Cambridge Guide to the Architecture of Christianity

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