NYU: Book Presentation, Diodata Malvasia’s “Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and their Miraculous Madonna” (ed., trans. Danielle Callegari and Shannon McHugh)

On Tuesday April 12th at 6:30 pm there will be a book presentation on Diodata Malvasia’s Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and their Miraculous Madonna, edited and translated by Shannon McHugh (NYU) and Danielle Callegari (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa).

With their new translated edition of the convent chronicle and history of the Madonna of San Luca composed by Diodata Malvasia, Danielle Callegari and Shannon McHugh bring to life the voice of a sixteenth-century Dominican nun and the battle she and her sisters waged to maintain autonomy and agency in the face of papal convent reform in Post-Tridentine Bologna. Under threat of losing their custodianship of the sacred and miraculous iconic painting of the Madonna, Malvasia and the nuns of the Bolognese convents of San Mattia and San Luca mounted a literary campaign against papal forces, employing careful rhetoric, composing in a variety of genres, and re-imagining existing paradigms. In addition to finally giving space to an engaged and dynamic writer previously obscured by history, with Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and their Miraculous Madonna, Callegari and McHugh pose questions about the possibilities for cloistered women’s creative expression and civic participation, the relationship between female religious orders and secular male authority, and the permeability of convent walls.

Participants:

Moderator: Virginia Cox (NYU)

Discussants: Danielle Callegari (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)

Shannon McHugh (NYU)

Meredith Ray (University of Delaware)

Lynn Westwater (George Washington University)