
St Catharine's College Trumpington Street CB2 1RL
Abigail Brundin is currently on secondment as Director of the British School at Rome ().
Abigail Brundin has been a lecturer in the Department of Italian since 2002, and a Fellow of St Catharine’s College since 2000.
Prof Brundinwas one of the three Principal Investigators of the groundbreaking interdisciplinary project. The project gave rise to a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum:. The project book, co-authored by the three PIs, is published by OUP:.The book won the Bainton Prize for History/Theology, and Honorable Mention for the Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize.
She also collaborates regularly with the National Trust and English Heritage to work on historic libraries in English country houses.
Prof Brundin teaches across a range of papers for the Department of Italian, in all years of the degree course. Her teaching is interdisciplinary, involving the study of literature, visual arts, history, political theory and religion. Her teaching focuses in particular onwomen writers, as well as other kinds of non-canonical literary voices, on lyric poetry, religious literature and culture,as well as onthe history of the book and of reading.
She offers coursesonItalian Women Writers and early modern devotional writing for the Faculty’s MPhil, as well as contributing research-led teaching to bothinterdisciplinary renaissance modules.
Prof Brundin supervises doctoral research on many aspects of renaissance and early modern culture, with a special focus on women writers, poetic culture, religious and devotional culture, and history of the book. She welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to her interests. Prospective doctoral students are encouraged to get in touch by email with a provisional research proposal.
Abigail Brundin specialises in the literature and culture of Italy in the renaissance and early modern periods. She has published on women writers in the first age of print, beginning with Vittoria Colonna,on literature and religious reform,on poetry in and around convents, and on devotional culture of the home. A recent collaboration with the National Trust examined Italian books in English great house libraries and the influence of the Grand Tour, leading to an exhibition at Belton House in Lincolnshire(see). Further work in this vein was also undertaken in the library at , with an exhibition in place in the house during 2019.
Brundin's pioneering collaborativeinvestigation into the forms and function of religious devotion in the home, , was funded by a Synergy Grant of £2.4m from the European Research Council and led to a major exhibition,, as well as a monograph:. Further information can be found at.
ProfBrundinis on the steering committee of the .
Books
- Vittoria Colonna,Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Abigail Brundin and Veronica Copello (Toronto: Iter and ACMRS Press, in press)
- Abigail Brundin, Deborah Howard, Mary Laven, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), xxv + 366pp.
- , ed. Abigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelliand Maria Serena Sapegno (Leiden:Brill, 2016), xxi + 561pp.
- ed. Abigail Brundin and Matthew Treherne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), xiv + 260pp.
- . Catholic Christendom 1200-1650 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), xvi + 218pp.
- ed. and trans. Abigail Brundin. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2005), xxxii + 197pp.
Journal Articles
- WithDunstan Roberts, ',The Library,16 (2015), 61-79
- 'On the Convent Threshold: Poetry for New Nuns in Early Modern Italy',Renaissance Quarterly, 65 (2012), 1125-64
- 'Vittoria Colonna and the Poetry of Reform',Italian Studies57 (2002), pp.61-74
- 'Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary',Modern Language Review, 96 (2001), pp.61-81
- 'Hearing the Other Voice in Early Modern Italy',Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 20 (2002), 7-12
Book Chapters
- ‘“Leading others on the road to salvation”: Vittoria Colonna and her readers’, inVittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact, ed. Virginia Cox and Shannon McHugh (Amsterdam University press, in press)
- ‘“A Man within a Woman, or even a God”: Vittoria Colonna and Sixteenth-Century Italian Poetic Culture’, inFaces of the Infinite: Neoplatonism and Poetics at the Confluence of Africa, Asia and Europe, ed. Stefan Sperl, Trevor Dadson and Yorgos Dedes (London: British Academy, in press)
- 'La lettura domestica della Bibbia nell'Italia rinascimentale', in Gli italianie la Bibbia nella prima età moderna: Leggere, interpretare, riscrivere, ed. Erminia Ardissino and Elise Boillet(Turnhout:Brepols, 2019), pp.125-42
- 'Domestic Bible Reading in Renaissance Italy',inPregare in casa: oggetti e documentidella pratica religiosatra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. Giovanna Baldissin Molli,Cristina Guarnieri andZuleika Murat(Rome: Viella, 2018), pp.211-27
- Multipleentries on books and manuscripts inMadonnas and Miracles: The Holy in Renaissance Italy, ed. Maya Corry, Deborah Howard, Mary Laven(London: Philip Wilson, 2017), pp.56-7; 91; 98-103; 172-4
- 'Poesia come devozione: leggere le rime di Vittoria Colonna', inAl crocevia della storia: poesia, religione e politica in Vittoria Colonna, ed. Maria Serena Sapegno (Rome: Vielli, 2016), pp.161-75
- 'Vittoria Colonna in Manuscript', inCompanion to Vittoria Colonna(cit.), pp.39-68
- ‘A nun at her private devotions’, inEmpryntedinthysmanere: early printed treasures from University Library, ed. EdPottenand EmilyDourish( University Library, 2014), pp.54-7
- '', inOxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
- 'Composition "a due": Lyric Poetry and Scribal Practice in Sixteenth-Century Italy', inRenaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, ed. by Machtelt Israels and Louis Waldman, 2 vols (Florence: Olschki, 2013), pp.496-504
- 'Re-Writing Trent, or What Happened to Italian Literature in the Wake of the First Indexes of Prohibited Books?', inReforming Reformation, ed. Thomas F. Mayer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), pp.197-218
- 'Literary production in the Florentine Academy under the first Medici Dukes: Reform, Censorship, Conformity?', inForms of Faith in Sixteenth-Century Italy, ed. Abigail Brundin and Matthew Treherne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 57-76
- '"Presto fia 'l mio potere in farvi onore": Renaissance Women Poets and the Importance of Praise', inCaro Vitto: Essays in Memory of Vittore Branca, edited by Jill Kraye and A. L. Lepschy in collaboration with Nicola Jones, Special Supplement ofThe Italianist27.2 (2007), pp.133-49
- 'Petrarch and the Italian Reformation', inPetrarch in Britain: Interpreters, Imitators and Translators over 700 years, edited by Peter Hainsworth, Martin McLaughlin and Letizia Panizza (British Academy, 2007) pp.131-48
- Vittoria Colonna,Sonnets for Michelangelo, inTeaching Other Voices: Women and Religion in Early Modern Europeed. by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr. (Chicago University Press, 2007,) pp.86-97
- 'Vittoria Colonna', inEncyclopaedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England, ed. Diana Robin, Anne Larson and Carole Levin (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007), pp.87-91
Exhibitions
- . Multimedia exhibition at Audley End House, Essex (English Heritage), curated by Abigail Brundin with Dunstan Roberts and Peter Moore, 1 April to 31 October 2019
- Sir Thomas Hoby in Italy: Cultures in Translation. Virtual exhibition based on research undertaken at Audley End house, hosted by University Library at, 2019-20
- Multimedia exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, , March - June 2017, arising from the ERC-funded research projectDomestic Devotions
- Exhibition of books at Belton House, Lincs (National Trust), curated by Abigail Brundin with Dunstan Roberts, 2 March to 3 November 2013