University of Sydney / Faculty of Arts / Department of Italian Studies / Staff / Academic Staff

Francesco Borghesi

Laurea in Philosophy, University of Bologna (Italy), MA and PhD in Italian Studies, Brown University (USA)
Lecturer
Room 725, Brennan MacCallum Building A18

+61 2 9036 7131

Francesco Borghesi was educated in Italy, Germany and the USA. He has visited numerous foreign academic institutions such as the Seminar für Geistesgeschichte und Philosophie der Renaissance at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (Germany) and the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University (USA). He has also been a Yates Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London (UK) and a de Bosis Fellow at Harvard University (USA). He taught at McGill University in Montreal (Canada) and lectured as visiting professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. Dr Borghesi’s research interests include, but are not limited to, late medieval and early modern literature, philosophy and theology and the interactions between them. As one of his research projects entails the edition of a humanist text, he has developed a strong interest in textual criticism, history of scholarship, philology and material culture. Due to the developments in textual criticism allowed by the new tools provided by the digital world, he is also interested in the challenges presented by digital editions. Dr Borghesi is a co-founder and a co-ordinator of the Network of Italian Scholars Abroad (NISA), which provides a world wide network for Italian scholars in the humanities and the social sciences.

Research Areas

  • The literature, thought and material culture of Italy, in particular the late middle ages and the early modern period.
  • European intellectual history.

Current Projects

  • Critical edition of the letters of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (to be published in Italy by Olschki Editore in Florence and in the USA in the I Tatti Renaissance Library series by Harvard University Press).
  • A study on the diffusion of the ideal of concordia in European culture, in particular between the thirteenth and the seventeenth century.
  • Translation and first English language commentary of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (with M. Papio and M. Riva). Under consideration at Cambridge University Press.

Selected Publications

Books

  • Concordia, pietas et docta religio. Le lettere di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Edizione e studio dell’incunabolo bolognese del 1496. Bologna: il Mulino, 2004.

Book Chapters

  • "A life in works." Pico della Mirandola. New Essays. M. V. Dougherty (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008: 202-219.
  • "Anima." Dizionario dei temi letterari. I. R. Ceserani, M. Domenichelli and P. Fasano (eds.). Turin: Utet, 2007: 93-97.

Articles

  • "Cos'è un 'problema storico'? Riflessioni metodologiche su Ginzburg e dintorni." Discipline filosofiche 16.1 (2006): 109-126.
  • "Per la pubblicazione delle lettere di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola." Rinascimento 43 (2003): 257-269.
  • "Pico e la concordia. A partire da un dibattito recente." Schede umanistiche 17.2 (2003): 91-107.

Areas of Teaching and Research Supervision

Teaching

  • Italian literature, thought and language; Italian intellectual history.

Research Supervision

  • Italian literature, philology and philosophy.

Conference Activity

Organizing

  • Two panels entitled Imagining Peace I and II: Concord, Conciliation, or Tolerance? with Valerie Dionne at the Renaissance Society of America Conference held in Los Angeles (19-21 March 2009).
  • Seminar on Digital Editing sponsored by and held at the Italian Academy at Columbia University (2 May 2006); http://www.storicamente.org/02_tecnostoria/archivio_4.htm.

Lectures and papers

  • Toward a Definition of the Notion of Concordia, paper presented at the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Los Angeles (19-21 March 2009, in English).
  • Pro libertate nostra, conclusive lecture given at the «Colloquio Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: su pensamiento, influencias y repercusiones», held at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras (Mexico City, 5-7 May 2008, in English).
  • The Idea of Concordia in the Culture of Quattrocento Italy, paper presented at the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Chicago (3-5 April 2008, in English).
  • The Edition of Giovanni Pico’s Letters: Some Philological Considerations, paper presented at the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Miami (22-24 March 2007, in English).
  • Giovanni Pico and Nicholas of Cusa on Concordia, paper presented at the Renaissance Society of America Conference in San Francisco (23-25 March 2006, in English).
  • Editing Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Letters. A Comparison of the Traditional and Digital Perspectives, paper presented at the International Conference «Digital Philology-Problems and Perspectives», Universität Hamburg, Hamburg (20-22 January 2006, in English).
  • Problems of Historical Method in Carlo Ginzburg’s Work, paper presented at the fellows weekly seminar at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University, New York (28 September 2005, in English).
  • Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Idea of Concordia, talk given at the Director’s Work-in-Progress Seminar, Warburg Institute, University of London (1 December 2004, in English).
  • Temi astrologici nell’epistolario di Giovanni Pico, paper presented at the conference 'Nello specchio del cielo. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e le Disputationes contro l’astrologia divinatrice", held in Mirandola (Modena) and Ferrara (16-17 April 2004, in Italian).
  • The two Pico della Mirandola: Giovanni and Giovan Francesco, paper presented at the Seminar für Geistesgeschichte und Philosophie der Renaissance, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (29 April 2003, in English).
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Other professional contributions

Academic Internet Projects

  • Editorial manager of the Pico Project (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/pico), a philological, hypermedia project dedicated to the Oratio de hominis dignitate of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
  • Co-editor and co-ordinator of the Conclusiones CM Project (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/pico/index.php), a collaborative, hypertextual edition of the Conclusiones Nongentae or 900 Theses, which is providing a forum for the understanding of this text reflecting Giovanni Pico’s method of taking the best elements from other philosophies and combining them in his own thought, symbolically representing one of the most profound transformations in Western thinking.

Other contributions

  • 2006 – present. Co-founder and co-ordinator of the Network of Italian Scholars Abroad (NISA: http://www.nisa.sumitalia.it). NISA is a network for scholars educated in the humanities and social sciences within the Italian academic system who are now professionally active in universities and research institutions outside Italy.
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