Dr. P. Renee Baernstein
Department Profile
Associate Professor of History; Affiliate of the Department of Comparative Religion
- PhD 1993, Harvard University
- AB, Cornell University
- Early Modern Italy
- Women and family
- Cultural history of religion
- World history
- HST 198 World History since 1500
- HST 206 Historical Inquiry
- HST 245 Making of Modern Europe, 1450-1750
- HST 315 The Renaissance
- HST/REL 316 The Age of the Reformation
- HST 400.V Senior Capstone: Machievelli
- HST 452/552 Florence in the Time of the Republic, 1250-1550
- HST 602 History and Theories
- A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan, Routledge, 2002
- “Reprobates and Courtiers: Lay Masculinities in the Colonna Family, 1520-1584” in Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy, ed. David S. Peterson with Daniel E. Bornstein, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008
- “Tullia d’Aragona: Two New Sonnets,” with Julia Hairston, Modern Language Notes, 2007
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"Roma caput Italiae. Elite Marriage and the Making of an Italian Ruling," Proceedings of a Conference on Early Modern Rome, 1341-1667, Association of American College and University Programs in Italy, Rome, 2011
Visiting Professorship, The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, 2009
Dr. Baernstein teaches the history of Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation Europe. Her current book project, Gender and Marriage in Baroque Rome: The Colonna Family, argues that the unique characteristics of the Papal political system, particularly clerical celibacy, created in the ruling class a family environment conducive to women holding powerful but hidden and mistrusted positions of influence.