Dr Catherine Kovesi
Senior Lecturer
Honours Coordinator
- Telephone:
- (+61 3) 8344 8160
- Email:
- c.kovesi@unimelb.edu.au
- Fax:
- (+61 3) 8344 7894
- Location:
- Room 323 Bridge
History, John Medley Building
The University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Academic Profile (click on the link for more information)
Biography
Catherine Kovesi graduated BA (Hons) from the University of Western Australia in 1985 and was awarded her D.Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1991.
Research
Catherine's principal research interests are Renaissance Italian cultures and discourses of consumption, and the religious and political history of Florence and its contado. She is also interested in Australian religious history. Her current research project, in conjunction with Antonia Finnane, examines luxury’s defining moments in Renaissance Italy and Ming China. Together with Antonia Finnane and Gideon Reuveni, she has recently established the Cultural History of Economies Research Hub (CHERHub). For more information about this hub and its activities see www.history.unimelb.edu.au/cherhub/. She is also a member of the ARC-funded Network for Early European Research (NEER).
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
- C. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary law in Italy 1200-1500, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2002
- 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, ‘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, Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming 2008
- C. Kovesi, ‘Regulating Consumption and Ritual Behaviour’, in F. Andrews, K.L. Jansen, and J. Drell (eds.), A Medieval Reader, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, forthcoming
- C. Kovesi, ‘Sumptuary Law’, in M.C. Schaus (ed.), Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, London: Routledge, 2006, 784-85
- 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, 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), 255-282
- C. Kovesi Killerby, ‘The Enforcement of Italian Sumptuary Legislation, 1200-1500: Conflict between ideal and practice’, in T. Dean and K. Lowe (eds.), Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 99-120
- 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
Medieval Plague, War and Heresy
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
The Medieval and Renaissance Body
Venice and Cultures of Consumption Overseas Intensive
Supervision
- Elise Grosser (PhD) The Paradox of Fame in Petrarch’s ‘Triumph of Fame’
- Damien Williams (PhD) The National Council of Priests in Australia
- Karolina Kurzak (PhD co-supervisor) The St Vincent De Paul Society in Victoria
- Sarah Martin (MA) ‘The Next Right Thing: Davis McCaughey, 1914-1952, The Early Years'
- Tracey Griffiths (MA) Oriental Carpets in Fifteenth-Century Venetian Paintings
- Christian Chenu (MA) Papal Theory and the Crusades of the Thirteenth-Century
- Charlotte Colding Smith (PhD, Associate Supervisor), Representations of the Turk in the Northern European Early Modern Imagination
- Anne Holloway (MA, Associate Supervisor), Fractured Conscience, Created Identity: The Early Dominican Order
- Jennifer Ceppellini (MA, Associate Supervisor), A Case of Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy
Recently completed supervisions:
- Karolina Kurzak (MA) From Obedience to Simplicity: The Influence of the Luxury Debate in Poland in the Long Nineteenth Century. (completed 2007)
- Jennifer Smith (MA, Associate Supervisor), The Use of Irony in English Letters 1470-1530 (completed 2007)
- Jennifer Spinks (PhD, Associate Supervisor), Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in German-speaking Europe, c. 1490-1570 (completed 2006)
- Amy Peek (MA), Slavery in Early Modern Florence (completed 2006)
- Rosa Salzberg (MA) ‘Father of the Republic of Letters: Aldus Manutius and Networks of Scholarship and Patronage in Renaissance Italy’ (completed 2005)