Dr Joanna Kostylo
Buckley Fellow at CRASSH 2007-2010
jmk28@cam.ac.uk
My research interests focus on the history of the Italian Renaissance and I have worked on the subjects of the History of the Book, Reformation and most recently the history of copyright and authorship. In My PhD dissertation, Republican Myth and Religious Reform, Venice and Poland, 1509-1609, I investigate the republican ‘myth’ of Venice as an ideal for radical Protestants and argue that its appeal extended territorially as far afield as Poland and socially to lower echelons where it merged with popular currents of mysticism and chiliasm. The whole phenomenon was mediated by a network of radical Protestant exiles, above all physicians from Venice. Departing from the radical religious thinking of Venetian physicians, I have also developed a particular interest in the interconnections between religious heterodoxy and Renaissance medical science and practice.
I am also engaged in a collaborative research project funded by AHRC to create a digital archive ‘Primary Sources on Copyright’ (www.copyrighthistory.org) from the invention of the printing press (c. 1450) to the Berne Convention (1886). In a series of online articles, I explore the ideas of authorship, artistic production (literary and visual) in the context of the rise of print and a book market, and the emergence of political and religious censorship in Italy in the 16-18th century.
I am currently working on two individual long-term projects, which eventually should appear as monographical studies:
• Healing the body and the soul: heterodoxy in early modern medicine and religion
• The construction of the author’s ‘copyright’: law and creativity in Renaissance Italy
