Nicky Mariano

Speranza

Rocke, the Nicky Mariano Librarian and director of the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy.

Rocke is the author of the critically acclaimed book “Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence” (Oxford University Press, 1998), which argues that same-sex acts, such as sodomy, were not deviant transgressions of a small minority, but an integral part of a normal masculine identity.

Much of his work challenges modern conceptions of gender and sexual identity by examining sexual activities of the past through a social, cultural, and political lens