Speranza
The Ray Smith Symposium in Syracuse University’s College of Arts
and Sciences continues its yearlong examination of “Sex and Power from the
Middle Ages to the Enlightenment” with a mini residency by Italian Renaissance
scholar Michael Rocke.
Rocke—the Nicky Mariano Librarian and director of the Berenson
Library at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance
Studies in Florence, Italy—presented a keynote lecture titled
“Sodo and His
Friends: ‘L’amore masculino’ and Male Friendship in Early Modern Italy”
on
Thursday, Oct. 20, at 7 p.m. in the Kilian Room (500) in the Hall of Languages.
The following day, he participated in a Ray Smith-HC Mini-Seminar from
9:30-11:30 a.m. (with breakfast served at 9 a.m.) in the SU Humanities Center
Seminar Room (304) of the Tolley Humanities Building.
Both events were free and
open to the public; however, the seminar required registration.
For more information about the keynote lecture,
contact Cassidy Perrault in the college’s Office of Curriculum, Instruction and
Programs at (315)443-1414. For more information about the HC Mini-Seminars,
contact Karen Ortega in The SU Humanities Center at (315) 443-5708.
This year’s Ray Smith Symposium is organized and
presented by the Renaissance and Medieval Studies Working Group, composed of
interdisciplinary scholars from across campus. Dympna Callaghan, the college’s
newly appointed William Safire Professor of Modern Letters, has taken a
leadership role in the planning.
“Rocke’s
lecture explores some of the ways in which friendship, love and sex among
males overlapped and interacted within the intensely homosocial environment of
early modern Italy,” says Callaghan.
“In this milieu, relations of male
friendship and love were idealized, and were considered a basic element of
social cohesion.
Same-sex eroticism, however, was officially reviled as sodomy,
and was outlawed as a threat to the survival of human society.”
Callaghan goes on to say that despite these
apparently irreconcilable perspectives, boundaries between friendship and desire
were not easily distinguished or delineated. “As a result, a variety of male
relationships flourished,” she adds.
A
social historian of early modern Italy, Rocke studies gender and sexuality, with
emphasis on homosexuality and male sociability.
He is the author of “Forbidden
Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence” (Oxford
University Press, 1996), and is co-editor of “The Italian Renaissance in the
Twentieth Century: Acts of an International Conference Florence, Villa I Tatti,
June 9-11, 1999” (L.S. Olschki, 2002) and “Power, Gender, and Ritual in Europe
and the Americas: Essays in Memory of Richard C. Trexler” (Centre for
Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008).
During the ‘90s, Rocke taught at
several institutional programs in Florence, including SU’s.
“Sex and Power” is enabled by a bequest from
the estate of Ray W. Smith ’21. Additional support for this year’s programming
comes from the Office of the Chancellor; the departments of art and music
histories; English; history; languages, literatures and linguistics; women’s and
gender studies; the LGBT Studies Program; and the SU Humanities Center, which
sponsors the mini seminars.
The next
visiting scholar is James M. Saslow, professor of Renaissance art
and theater at the CUNY Graduate Center, Nov. 10-11.
This winter, “Sex and Power” partners with Syracuse University
Library for an exhibition titled “The Power and the Piety: The World of Medieval
and Renaissance Europe.” The exhibition showcases a variety of rare books and
manuscripts, including illuminated prayer books decorated in gold leaf, a page
from the Gutenberg Bible and an antiphonal Elephant Folio, from the Special
Collections Research Center. For more information, contact Sean Quimby,
librarian and director of the SCRC, at (315)443-9759.
The Ray Smith Symposium is named for the Auburn, N.Y., native
who, after graduating from SU in 1921, was a highly respected teacher and
administrator.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
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