Dr Nicholas Eckstein

Ph.D (Monash University); BA (Hons) Monash University
Cassamarca Senior Lecturer
Room 819 MacCallum Building

+61 2 9351 2155

Nick previously lectured in history at Monash University and the University of Melbourne. In 1998-1999 he was the Deborah Loeb Brice Fellow in the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, Florence. He was Robert Lehmann Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti in 2003, and again in 2006.
He has been awarded a number of research grants, including an ARC Small Grant (1999); an ARC Large Grant (2001-2003); and two ARC Discovery Grants (2005-06; 2008-2010). Nick is the recipient of two Faculty of Arts Teaching Initiatives Award (2001, 2003) and a Faculty of Arts Teaching Excellence Award (2004)

• Social and cultural history of Late-Medieval, Renaissance and Early-Modern Italy, especially Florence.
• Neighbourhood and social interaction
• popular religion and lay devotion
• daily life
• urban culture
• the social context of art.

• THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL: IN THE HISTORY OF RENAISSANCE FLORENCE
  This book will offer a new interpretation of the Brancacci Chapel and its famous fresco cycle in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Originally decorated in 1425, the cycle is the first mature example of Italian Renaissance painting and a turning point in western art. This book uses new evidence to weave the programme into Florence’s social and cultural fabric and to relate both chapel and frescoes to the Florentines who in the literal sense ‘used’ them. The book argues that groups of people perceived the frescoes differently according to their gender, class, occupation, membership in the Carmelite Order or lay-devotional society (confraternity), or residence in the neighbourhood surrounding the Carmine.
• THE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF RENAISSANCE FLORENCE: THE DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
  This project subjects the greatest source of social, economic and urban data on Renaissance Florence – the tax censuses called the Catasto – to serial analysis over the momentous period of the city’s fifteenth-century development. The study incorporates the dynamic of change and also integrates quantitative with ethnographic analysis. This combination aims to produce a history that exposes the structural evolution of central Florence in the sweeping terms of a major statistical analysis, but which also narrates subtle cultural developments and nuances in an ethnographic key.
  Collaboration
  ARC Discovery Grant 2008-2010
• Beyond the Neighborhood: The Urban Histories of Sociability and Community in Renaissance Florence, 1400-1500
  The research for this project is complete. A number of articles, and a collection of essays, are in press and in preparation.

The District of the Green Dragon: Neighbourhood Life and Social Change in Renaissance Florence (Florence, National Institute for Renaissance Studies: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1995)

Edited books:

Sociability and its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital, and their Alternatives in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Europe, ed. Nicholas Eckstein and Nicholas Terpstra (Turnhout: Brepols, in press as at September, 2008).

The Brancacci Chapel: Form, Function and Setting. Nicholas Eckstein, Villa I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, vol. 22 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2007).

With Nicholas Terpstra: “Sociability and its Discontents,” in Sociability and its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital, and their Alternatives in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Europe, ed. Nicholas Eckstein and Nicholas Terpstra (Turnhout: Brepols, in press as at September, 2008).

“Pittori, amici e vicini: the Formal and Informal Bonds of Community amongst Florentine Artists,” in Sociability and its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital, and their Alternatives in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Europe, ed. Nicholas Eckstein and Nicholas Terpstra (Turnhout: Brepols, in press as at September, 2008).

“The Brancacci Chapel: New Questions, Hypotheses and Interpretations,” in The Brancacci Chapel: Form, Function and Setting. Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, 6 June 2003, ed. Nicholas A. Eckstein, Villa I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, vol. 22 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2007), 1-13.

“The Brancacci, the Chapel, and the Mythic History of San Frediano,” The Brancacci Chapel: Form, Function and Setting. Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, 6 June 2003, ed. Nicholas A. Eckstein, Villa I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, vol. 22 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2007), 15-36.

“The Neighbourhood as Microcosm of the Social Order”, Renaissance Florence: A Social History, edited by J. Paoletti and R. Crum, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 219-239.

“The Religious Confraternities of High Renaissance Florence: Crisis or Continuity?” Rituals, Images and Words: the Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Bill Kent & Charles Zika (Leiden: Brepols, 2005), 9-32.

“The Widows’ Might. Women’s Identity and Devotion in the Brancacci Chapel,” Oxford Art Journal, 28, 1 (2005): 99-118.

“Words and Deeds, Stasis and Change. New Directions in Florentine Devotion around 1500,” Journal of Religious History, 28, 1 (2004): 1-18.

“Con buona affetione”: Confraternities, Charity and the Poor in Early Cinquecento Florence, Thomas Max Safley, ed., The Reformation of Charity: The Secular and the Sacred in Early Modern Poor Relief (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003): 47-62.

• HSTY1034 Early-Modern Europe
• HSTY2645 Italy and the Wider World
• HSTY2647 Renaissance Italy
• HSTY2660 Violence in Italy
• HSTY4011 Violence in History

Nick is currently supervising four full-time Ph.D candidates, whose projects cover:

• the rhetoric of urban space in medieval Florence (Nick Gordon)
• the performance of urban life and culture in Renaissance Florence (Kate Colleran)
• Sacrifice in Renaissance Florence (Kate Blake)
• Modern visions of the Italian Renaissance (Christina Loong)

April 2009
Co-organiser of series of sessions entitled “Beyond the Neighbourhood.” Annual Meeting of Renaissance Society of America, Los Angeles.

April 2009
“The Anatomy and Physiology of Early-Renaissance Neighbourhood: Central Florence in the Fifteenth Century.” Annual Meeting of Renaissance Society of America, Los Angeles.

September 2008
“The Geometry of Charity in Early Modern Florence: Honour, Drainpipes and the Confraternity of the Archangel Michael,” in Conference: “Fraternità e barriere – Brotherhood and Borders”, held at the Scuola Normale, Pisa.

April 2008
“Florence on Foot: Urban Places and Spaces in the Mind of the Florentine Flâneur,” Annual Meeting of Renaissance Society of America, Chicago.

April 2006
“Social Capital and the Building Blocks of Florentine Sociability,” Annual Meeting of Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco.

August 2005
“Pittori, Amici e Vicini: Formal and Informal Bonds of Community Amongst
Florentine Artists,” Sociability and its Discontents. Civil Society, Social Capital, and the Alternatives in European and Australian Society,” Conference held at the University of Sydney. Sponsored by the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and the ARC Network for Early European Research (NEER).

February 2005
“Poverty and the Community in Renaissance Florence”, NEER Session 1, Directions for future research on the theme of ‘Social Fabric’, with special interest in the sub-theme of ‘Poverty’, Session 1, Conference of Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early-Modern Studies (ANZAMEMS), Auckland, New Zealand.

Session Chair
NEER Session 2, Directions for future research on the theme of ‘Social Fabric’, with special interest in the sub-theme of ‘Poverty’, Session 1, Conference of Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early-Modern Studies (ANZAMEMS), Auckland, New Zealand.

April 2004
Convenor of Session for Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, within Annual Meeting of Renaissance Society of America, New York City, New York. Session title: "Dynamic Madonnas, Efficacious Objects: Divine Interventions in the Late-Medieval and Renaissance Italian City"

“The Victories Spiritual and Military of the Florentine ‘People’s Madonna’ ”, delivered to Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, New York City, New York.

6-7 June 2003
“The Brancacci, the Chapel, and the Mythic History of San Frediano,” delivered to The Brancacci Chapel: A Symposium on Form, Function and Setting, two-day conference sponsored by Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence. Organiser: Nicholas Eckstein.

2002
“Seeing and Believing. The Performance of Lay Devotion and the Urban Setting in Renaissance Florence”, delivered at Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Scottsdale, Arizona

“Helping and Representing the Poor: Confraternities in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence,” delivered by proxy to Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, San Antonio, Texas, USA

2001
“Art, Urbanism and the Performance of Lay Devotion in Renaissance Florence”, delivered by proxy to ACIS/HRC Conference: 'The Importance of Italy', Australian National University, 21-23 September 2001

2000
“In Search of the People: an Interim Report on Florentine Confraternities and Lay-Religious Life in the Early Cinquecento”, delivered at ‘Florence 2000’: Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America.

• Co-Editor, Journal of Religious History (Blackwells Publishing)
• Member of Governing Committee of ‘NEER’: ARC Network for Early European Research
• Team-Leader for key theme, ‘The Social Fabric’, ARC Network for Early European Research