Dr Catherine Kovesi
Senior Lecturer
- Telephone:
- (+61 3) 8344 8160
- Email:
- c.kovesi@unimelb.edu.au
- Fax:
- (+61 3) 8344 7894
- Location:
- Room 318
History, Arts West
The University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Biography
Catherine Kovesi graduated with a BA (Hons) in History and Italian from the University of Western Australia, and completed her doctorate in History at the University of Oxford in 1991 with a Hackett Foundation Scholarship. She has held fellowships at Oriel College, Oxford and at the University of Western Australia, and in 2008 was a Craig Hugh Smyth Fellow at the Harvard University Centre for Renaissance Studies at 'Villa I Tatti' in Florence. Catherine teaches subjects in late medieval and Renaissance History, as well as an overseas intensive subject in Venice.
Research
Catherine's principal research interests are Renaissance Italian cultures and discourses of luxury and consumption, and the religious and political history of Florence and its contado. She has also published on Australian religious history and has completed consultancy work for several religious orders. She is a co-founder of the Cultural History of Economies Research Hub (CHERHub). She is also a member of the ARC-funded Network for Early European Research (NEER). Together with Charles Zika, Jenny Spinks and Robyn Sloggett she is working on an interactive website project with students utilizing the early prints and rare books in the University's Baillieu library: melbourneprints.wordpress.com/
Publications
Books
- C. Kovesi and L. Polizzotto, Memorie di Casa Valori (Florence: Casa Editrice Nerbini, 2007)
- C. Kovesi, Pitch Your Tents on Distant Shores: A History of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Tahiti (Sydney: Playright Publishing, 2006) (2nd edition, 2010)
- C. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy 1200-1500 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2002) (and also available at Oxford Scholarship Online)
- C. Kovesi Killerby, Under the Southern Cross: A History of Catholic Education in Victoria Park 1899-1999(Perth: Lamb Print, 1999)
- C. Kovesi Killerby, Ursula Frayne: A Biography (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1996)
Articles and Chapters
- C. Kovesi, 'Muddying the Waters: Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici and the Lake of Fucecchio', in John Law and Bernadette Paton (eds.), Communes and Despots in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, 223-247 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010).
- C. Kovesi, 'Regulating Consumption and Ritual Behaviour', in Katherine L. Jansen, Joanna Drell and Frances Andrews (eds.), Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation, 189-95 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2009)
- C. Kovesi, 'Women and Sumptuary Law', in Peter McNeil (ed.), Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, 4 vols., vol. 1, chapter 9 (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2009)
- C. Kovesi, 'Engendering Lust in Early Modern Italy: Pisanello's Luxuria', in Megan Cassidy-Welch and Peter Sherlock (eds.), Practices of Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 137-150 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008)
- C. Kovesi, 'Sumptuary Law', in M.C. Shaus (ed.), Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, 784-85 (London: Routledge, 2006)
- C. Kovesi Killerby, '"Never Locked Up or Tied": Early Irish Missionary Attitudes to the Aboriginal Peoples of Western Australia', in P. Bull, F. Devlin-Glass, F. and H. Doyle (eds.), Ireland and Australia, 1798-1998: Studies in Culture, Identity and Migration, 124-33 (Sydney: Crossing Press, 2000)
- C. Kovesi Killerby, '"Heralds of a Well-Instructed Mind": Nicolosa Sanuti's Defence of Women and Their Clothes', Renaissance Studies, 13.3 (1999): 255-82 (selected as 'Article of the Month', Medieval Feminist Index Web site)
- C. Kovesi Killerby, 'The Enforcement of Italian Sumptuary Legislation, 1299-1500: Conflict Between Ideal and Practice', in T. Dean and K. Lowe (eds.), Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, 99-120 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
- C. Kovesi, 'Niccolò Valori and the Medici Restoration of 1512: Politics, Eulogies and the Preservation of a Family Myth', Rinascimento, 27 (1987): 301-325
Teaching
- HIST10007 Medieval Plague, War and Heresy (1st year)
- HIST40030 History for Historians (4th year core subject)
Supervision
- Elise Grosser (PhD), The Paradox of Fame in Petrarch's 'Triumph of Fame'
- Karolina Kurzak (PhD), The St Vincent de Paul Society in Victoria
- Nicholas Frigo (PhD), Oscar Wilde's American Tour
- Michael Pickering (PhD), The Construction of the Vampire in Eighteenth-Century Europe
- Charlotte Colding Smith (PhD), Printed Images of the Turk in Early Modern Germany
Recent Completions
- Tracey Griffiths (MA), Tying the Knot: The Social Life and Visual Culture of Oriental Carpets in Renaissance Venice (2009)
- Christian Chenu (MA) Papal Theory and the Crusades of the Thirteenth Century (2008)
- Sarah Martin (MA), 'The Next Right Thing': Davis McCaughey, 1914-1952, The Early Years (2008)
- Karolina Kurzak (MA), From Obedience to Simplicity: The Influence of the Luxury Debate in Poland in the Long Nineteenth Century (2007)
- Amy Peek (MA), Slavery in Early Modern Florence (2006)
- Rosa Salzberg (MA), Father of the Republic of Letters: Aldus Manutius and Networks of Scholarship and Patronage in Renaissance Italy (2005)