Dr. Lisa Kaborycha
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow 2007-2010
B.A. Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley
M.A. Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. History, University of California, Berkeley
Research Interests:
Social History, History of the Book, Quattrocento Literature, Popular Culture in Renaissance Italy, Women’s History, Gender and Sexuality, Medici Florence and the World
email:
lkaborycha[at]medici[dot]org
Dr. Lisa Kaborycha is a native of New York City, who after moving to California studied at the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her Ph.D. in Medieval and Early Modern European History there in 2006. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled “Copying Culture: Fifteenth-Century Florentines and Their Zibaldoni” examines the materials compiled by Florentines in their personal literary anthologies during the Quattrocento, revealing contemporary attitudes on manners, civility, health care, child rearing, marriage and sexuality.
Dr. Kaborycha read and analyzed over three hundred manuscripts in Florentine libraries during the course of a year spent in Florence as the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in 2003-04. Among the other awards she has received are the Alan Sharlin Fellowship in Social History (2005-06), the Medieval Association of the Pacific Founder’s Prize, first place (2006), as well as teaching awards from the University of California, Berkeley where for seven years she taught courses including: Western Civilization, both Medieval and Early Modern to the Present, Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, Women in the Renaissance, Historiography, Italian Language, and Works of Dante. At Menlo College, California, she also taught World History.
Dr. Kaborycha has delivered papers at academic conferences including The Renaissance Society of America (Chicago, 2008; Tempe, Arizona 2002), International Medieval Congress (Leeds, England 2005) The Medieval Association of the Pacific (San Francisco, 2005; Victoria, British Columbia 2000) on topics ranging from the reception of Ovid’s Ars amatoria in Quattrocento Italian society, the transmission of the life story of Buddha in the medieval legend of Barlam and Josefat in a fifteenth-century Florentine sacred drama, and stories of transvestite female saints recorded in fifteenth-century zibaldoni notebooks. Since coming to work at the Medici Archive Project she has turned her attention to relations between the Austrian Habsburg Court and Florence during the sixteenth century and cultural exchanges between Florence and Britain during the seventeenth century. Soon to be published is a paper delivered in 2008 at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti entitled "Expressing a Habsburg Sensibility in the Medici Court: The Grand Duchess Giovanna d'Austria’s Patronage and Public Image in Florence ".
Her recent book A Short History of Renaissance Italy, published by Prentice Hall, is due out in Fall, 2010.
