Dr Jenny Spinks
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
- Email:
- jspinks@unimelb.edu.au
- Telephone:
- (+61 3) 8344
- Fax:
- (+61 3) 8344 7894
- Location:
- Room 313
History, Arts West
The University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Biography
Jenny Spinks researches and teaches the history of early modern Europe, with a particular focus on Germany, France, and the Low Countries. She completed a PhD in early modern German history in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne in 2006, and prior to that completed an MA in early modern French history at the University of Tasmania. She has also worked as a critic and curator of contemporary Australian art and craft. She has taken up research scholarships at the Universities of Heidelberg and Vienna, the British Museum, and has most recently held a Grete Sondheimer Fellowship at the Warburg Institute in London and a Fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany.
Jenny co-convenes the monthly Early Modern Circle at the University of Melbourne with Claudia Guli and Dr Dolly Mackinnon.
Research
Jenny currently holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship on the ARC Discovery project 'Reading the Signs: Disaster, apocalypse and demonology in European print culture, 1450-1700', 2009–2012, held with Professor Charles Zika of the University of Melbourne and Professor Susan Broomhall of the University of Western Australia. As part of this project, she is preparing a single-author book with the working title Prodigious Histories: Wonder books in early modern northern Europe. It will examine the ways that early modern Protestants and Catholics used print culture to polemically borrow from and reinvent each other's stories about the terrifying wonders of the natural world.
In collaboration with Susan Broomhall, Jenny also works on historical narratives of early modern women in history, art, heritage and tourist contexts in the Low Countries, with a forthcoming co-authored monograph for Ashgate on this topic. Finally, Jenny has a project in preparation which will look at the contribution of women to knowledge in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century northern Europe, through an examination of illustrated educational books prepared by women working in the fields of antiquarianism, botany, and entomology.
Together with Catherine Kovesi, Charles Zika, and Robyn Sloggett, Jenny is working on an interactive website project, Melbourne Prints with students utilizing the early prints and rare books in the University's Baillieu library.
Recent Grants
- Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (2009–2012): 'Reading the signs: Disaster, apocalypse and demonology in European print culture, 1450-1700'. CI1 Charles Zika (Melbourne), CI2 Susan Broomhall (UWA), APD Jenny Spinks (Melbourne)
- Fellowship, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany, three months (2009)
- Publication Grant, The University of Melbourne (2008)
- Humanities Travelling Fellowship, The Australian Academy of the Humanities, two months (2008)
- Grete Sondheimer Fellowship, The Warburg Institute, London, two months (2008)
Publications
Books
- Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks. Early Modern Women in the Low Countries: Feminizing Sources and Interpretations of the Past. Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming April 2011. ISBN 978-0-7546-6752-1. Each author = 50%.
- Jennifer Spinks. Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009. Vol. 5 in the series 'Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World.' ISBN 978-1-85196-630-1.
Refereed Journal Articles
- Jennifer Spinks. 'Print and polemic in sixteenth-century France: the Histoires prodigieuses, confessional identity, and the Wars of Religion.' Renaissance Studies, accepted and forthcoming 2011/2012.
- Jennifer Spinks and Susan Broomhall. 'Representing women's labour at the dawn of the Golden Age: Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg's Old and New Trades (c.1594–c.1612).' Cultural and Social History 7.1 (2010): 9–33. Each author = 50%.
- Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks. 'Interpreting place and past in narratives of Dutch heritage tourism.' Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 14.2 (2010): 267–85. Each author = 50%.
- Jennifer Spinks. 'Monstrous births and Counter-Reformation visual polemics: Johann Nas and the 1569 Ecclesia Militans.' Sixteenth Century Journal 40.2 (2009): 335–63.
- Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks. 'Finding Rembrandt? Place, history, experience and the individual.' Dutch Crossing: A Journal of Low Countries Studies 33.1 (2009): 6–22. Each author = 50%.
- Jennifer Spinks. 'Jakob Rueff's 1554 Trostbüchle: a Zurich physician explains and interprets monstrous births.' Intellectual History Review 18.1 (Special issue on Humanism and Medicine in the Renaissance, eds Susan Broomhall and Yasmin Haskell) (2008): 41–59.
- Jennifer Spinks. 'Wondrous monsters: representing conjoined twins in early sixteenth-century German broadsheets.' Parergon 22.2 (2005): 77–112.
- Jennifer Spinks. 'Education and entertainment: the redecoration of Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy's Ménagerie at Versailles.' Melbourne Art Journal 6 (2003): 2¬5–34.
Book Chapters
- Jennifer Spinks. 'Codpieces and pot bellies in the Songes drolatiques: satirising masculine self-control in early modern France and Germany.' In Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline van Gent, eds, Governing Masculinities: Regulating Selves and Others in the Early Modern Period. Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming 2011.
- Jennifer Spinks. 'Segni, mirabilia e mostri.' Trans. Guido Giglioni. In Germana Ernst, ed., Magia Naturale e Stregoneria nel Rinascimento. Rome: Carocci, forthcoming 2011.
Book Reviews and Shorter Pieces
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Jennifer Spinks. 'Jakob Rueff's 1587 Trostbüchle.' In Michael Sappol, ed., Hidden Treasures: 175 Years of the National Library of Medicine. Exhibition catalogue. Bethesda: National Library of Medicine, forthcoming 2011.
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Jennifer Spinks. Review of Pierre Boaistuau, Histoires prodigieuses (édition de 1561). Edition critique, introduction by Stephen Bamforth and annotations by Jean Céard, in Parergon, forthcoming 2011.
- Jennifer Spinks. Review of Larry Silver and Elizabeth Wyckoff, eds, Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian. Review for Medievalia et Humanistica (forthcoming 2011).
- Jennifer Spinks. Review of Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, ed. Jakob Ruf. Leben, Werk und Studien (5 vol. series). Commissioned review for Medical History 54.3 (2010): 398–400.
- Spinks, Jennifer. Review of Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, ed. Jakob Ruf, ein Zürcher Stadtchirurg und Theatermacher im 16. Jahrhundert (vol. 1 of Jakob Ruf. Leben, Werk und Studien), for Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 32.1 (2009): 144–6.
- Spinks, Jennifer. Review of Peter Burke and R. Po-chia Hsia, eds. Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe, for H-German, April 2009.
- Spinks, Jennifer. Review of Stephan Füssel. Gutenberg and the Impact of Printing, for H-Holy Roman Empire, August 2006.
- Spinks, Jennifer. Review of David Hotchkiss Price. Albrecht Dürer's Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation, and the Art of Faith, for Parergon 23. 1 (2006): 194–196.
- Spinks, Jennifer. Review of Ilse Tobias. Die Beichte in den Flugschriften der frühen Reformationszeit, for H-German, January 2005.
- Jennifer Spinks. Review of Christa Grössinger. Humour and Folly in Secular and Profane Prints of Northern Europe, 1430–1540. Review for Parergon 20, no. 2 (2003): 196–198.
Supervision
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Claudia Guli (PhD), 'The Legitimacy of the Trial of Charles I: Contemporary justifications, historical precedent, the right of revolt and the roots of political power in England' (co-supervisor)
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Charlotte-Rose Millar, 'Witchcraft, popular print and popular belief in seventeenth-century Britain' (PhD) (co-supervisor)
Teaching