CHRISTOPHER S. CELENZA - CURRICULUM VITAE
Department of German and Romance Languages
Johns Hopkins University
3400 N. Charles St.
Baltimore, Maryland 21218
E-mail: celenza@jhu.edu
Tel: 410-516-4626
Fax: 410-516-5358
Employment:
Professor, Dept. of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, Johns Hopkins University, 2005 to present; Director of Graduate Studies, Italian, 2006-present; secondary appointment, History Dept. and Classics Dept.
Director, Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe at Johns Hopkins University, 2008 – present
Professor and associate chair for graduate studies, History Department, Michigan State University, 2004-05
Associate Professor, History, Michigan State University, 2000-2004
Assistant Professor, History, Michigan State University, 1996-2000
Degrees:
Dr. phil., Classics (Neo-Latin Literature), University of Hamburg, 2001.
Dissertation: “Piety and Pythagoras in Late Fifteenth Century Florence: The Symbolum Nesianum.” Supervisors: Prof. Walther Ludwig, Prof. Dieter Harlfinger.
Ph.D., History, Duke University, 1995.
Dissertation: “A Renaissance Humanist’s View of his Social and Cultural Environment: Lapo Da Castiglionchio the Younger’s De curiae commodis.” Supervisor: Prof. Ronald G. Witt.
M.A., History, S.U.N.Y. Albany, 1989.
B.A., History, S.U.N.Y. Albany, 1988.
Grants and Awards (External):
Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, 2008-09.
ACLS Burckhardt Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars, 2003-4 (provided a full year’s support for research and writing at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina).
Renaissance Society of America Research Grant, 2001, for “Intellectuals and Ritual in the Renaissance: Late Antiquity and the Search for Ancient Wisdom” (provides $2000 for research and travel).
Andrew Mellon Fellow, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti), 1999-2000 (provides a full year’s support for research and writing in Florence).
Bundeskanzler Humboldt Stipendium (Federal Chancellor’s Humboldt Fellowship), awarded for 1999-2000 (provides a full year’s support for research and writing in Germany: declined).
Doctoral Stipend, Graduiertenkolleg Textüberlieferung, Universität Hamburg, 1994-1996.
Rome Prize Fellow, American Academy in Rome, 1993-1994.
Fulbright Fellow to Florence, 1992-1993. Summer extension, summer 1993.
Fellowship in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Duke University Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1989-1992.
Publications - Books:
The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) xx + 210 pp.
Winner of the Renaissance Society of America’s 2005 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize. CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2006. Subject of Panel, Renaissance Society of America, 2005 (Panelists: Brian Copenhaver, Philosophy, UCLA; James Hankins, History, Harvard; Ann Moyer, History, University of Pennsylvania). Paperback ed., 2006.
Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence: The Symbolum Nesianum, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 101 (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2001) x + 238 pp.
Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia: Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger’s De curiae commodis, Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, 31 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999) xiv + 244 pp.
Ed., with Kenneth Gouwens, Humanism and Creativity: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 411 pp.
Publications - Articles and Book Chapters:
Note: Here and below, “Forthcoming” = finished and accepted
“End Game: Humanist Latin in the Late Fifteenth Century,” forthcoming in Latinitas Perennis, II (Leiden: Brill, 2009): 13000 words.
“Humanism” (3000 words), “Neoplatonism” (3000), “Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism” (3000), “Academy” (3000), “Cato the Younger” (1000), all forthcoming in A. Grafton, G. Most, and S. Settis, eds., The Classical Tradition (Harvard University Press).
“Hellenism in the Renaissance,” forthcoming in P. Vasunia, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (Oxford University Press, 2008): 6000 words.
“Humanism and the Classical Tradition,” Annali d’Italianistica 26 (2008), 25-49.
“The Platonic Revival,” in J. Hankins, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 72-96.
“Le studiolo à la Renaissance,” in Les lieux de savoir, v.1, ed. C. Jacob (Paris: Albin Michel, 2007): 371-91.
(with K. Gouwens), “Humanist Culture and its Malcontents: Alcionio, Sepúlveda, and the Consequences of Translating Aristotle,” in C.S. Celenza and K. Gouwens, Humanism and Creativity (as above): 347-80.
“Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005): 483-506.
“Petrarch, Latin, and Italian Renaissance Latinity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 35 (2005): 509-36.
“From Center to Periphery in the Florentine Intellectual Field: Orthodoxy Reconsidered,” in S. Campbell and S. Milner, eds., Italian Renaissance Cities: Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Oct., 2004): 271-93
“Creating Canons in Fifteenth-Century Ferrara: Angelo Decembrio’s De politia litteraria, 1.10,” in Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004): 43-98
“Lorenzo Valla, ‘Paganism,’ and Orthodoxy,” in Studia Humanitatis: Studies in Honor of Salvatore Camporeale, ed. W. Stephens, supplement to Modern Language Notes 119 (2004): supp. pp. 66-87.
“Temi neopitagorici nel pensiero di Marsilio Ficino,” in ed. S. Toussaint, Actes du XLIIe Colloque International d'Etudes Humanistes “Marsile Ficin 1499-1999,” Cahiers de l’Humanisme, Les Belles Lettres (Paris, 2002): 57-70.
“Late Antiquity and Florentine Platonism: The ‘Post-Plotinian’ Ficino,” in M.J.B. Allen and V.R. Rees, eds., Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (Leiden, Boston, Cologne: Brill, 2002): 71-97.
“Antiquité tardive et platonisme florentin,” in Fosca Mariani Zini, ed., Penser entre les lignes: philosophie et philologie au Quattrocento (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2001): 197-226. [French version of previous piece]
“The Search for Ancient Wisdom in Early Modern Europe: Reuchlin and the Late Ancient Esoteric Paradigm,” Journal of Religious History 25 (2001): 115-33.
“Late Antiquity and the Florentine Renaissance: Historiographical Parallels,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (2001): 17-35.
“Lapo da Castiglionchio il Giovane, Poggio Bracciolini e la vita curialis: Appunti su due testi umanistici,” Medioevo e Rinascimento 14, n.s.11 (2000): 129-45.
“Giordano Bruno, the Presocratic Tradition, and the Late Ancient Heritage,” Accademia 2 (2000): 43-62.
“Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino,” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 667-711.
“‘Parallel lives’: Plutarch’s Lives, Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger (1405-1438) and the Art of Italian Renaissance Translation,” Illinois Classical Studies 22 (1997): 121-155.
“The Will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini (ob. 1438),” Traditio 51 (1996): 257-286.
“Renaissance Humanism and the New Testament: Lorenzo Valla’s Annotations to the Vulgate,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21 (1994): 33-52.
Publications - Reviews and Short Notes:
Review of Armando Maggi, In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), forthcoming in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft.
Review of Edward Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), Journal of Religion in Europe 1 (2008), 232-36
Review of Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, vols. 5 and 6, ed. and tr. J. Hankins and M.J.B. Allen (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2005-06), Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008), 496-99.
Review of Giorgio Bernardi Perini, ed., Il latino nell’età dell’umanesimo. Atti del Convegno, Mantova, 26-27 ottobre 2001. Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Scienze Lettere e Arti, Miscellanea 12 (Florence: Olschki, 2004), forthcoming in the Ancient History Bulletin.
Review of Christine L. Joost-Gaugier, Measuring Heaven: Pythagoras and his Influence on Thought and Art in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), Isis 98 (2007): 376-77
Review of Daniela Rando, Dai margini la memoria: Johannes Hinderbach (1418-1486) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), in the American Historical Review 110 (2005): 1284-85
Review of Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, vols. 1-4, ed. and tr. M.J.B Allen and J. Hankins (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2001-04), in Renaissance Quarterly, 58 (2005): 1302-05.
Review of J. Miller and B. Inwood, eds., Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), in the Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (2005): 207-08.
Review of Claudia Ortner-Buchberger, Briefe schreiben im 16. Jahrhundert: Formen und Funktionen des epistolarischen Diskurses in den italienischen libri di lettere (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2003), in Renaissance Quarterly, 58 (2005): 899-901
Review of Marion Leathers Kuntz, The Anointment of Dionisio: Prophecy and Politics in Renaissance Italy (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) in The Catholic Historical Review 91 (2005), 165-67.
“An Unpublished Letter of Giovanni Nesi to Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici,” in Bruniana et Campanelliana (2004): 5 pp.
Review of Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), in Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 1376-78.
Review of Martin F. Ederer, Humanism, Scholasticism, and the Theology and Preaching of Domenico de’ Domenichi in the Italian Renaissance (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), in Seventeenth-Century News / Neo-Latin News 62 (2004): 313-15.
Review of Filippo Iappelli S.I. and Ulderico Parente, eds., Alle origini dell’Università dell’Aquila. Cultura, università, collegi gesuitici all’inizio dell’età moderna in Italia meridionale. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi promosso dalla Compagnia di Gesù e dall’Università dell’Aquila nel IV centenario dell’istituzione dell’ Aquilanum Collegium (1596) [8-11 Novembre 1995] (Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 2000), in Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (2004): 574-76
Review of Donald R. Kelley, The Descent of Ideas: The History of Intellectual History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), in Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 268-69.
Review of Robert Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) in Quaderni d’Italianistica 34 (2003): 148-52
Review of Riccardo Fubini, Humanism and Secularization from Petrarch to Valla, tr. M. King, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 18 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003), in Catholic Historical Review (2003): 766-67.
Review of Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000) in Sixteenth Century Journal, 34 (2003): 619-21
Review of Martin Mulsow, Frühneuzeitliche Selbsterhaltung: Telesio und die Naturphilosophie der Renaissance (Tübingen, 1998) in Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): 743-5.
Review of Brendan Dooley, The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture (Baltimore and London, 1999) in Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 533-4.
Review of John R. Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and his Assistants, 1570-1601 (New York and Cambridge, 2000) in Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 159-61.
Review of Noel L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe (Albany, New York, 1999) Esoterica 3 (2000): online at: www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIII/HTML/Celenza.htm
Triple review of Michael J. B. Allen, Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation (Florence, 1998); Gian Carlo Garfagnini, ed., Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494-1994), Studi Pichiani, 5, 2 vols. (Florence, 1997); and Jörg Lauster, Die Erlösungslehre Marsilio Ficinos, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 69 (Berlin and New York, 1998) in Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 887-891.
Review of Carlo Varotti, Gloria e ambizione politica nel rinascimento: Da Petrarca a Machiavelli (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1998) in Renaissance Studies 14 (2000): 264-267.
“Calligraphy” and “Manuscripts,” in Paul Grendler, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, 6 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1999) 1: 328-330 and 4: 32-36.
Brief review essay on Michael J. B. Allen, Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation (Florence: Olschki, 1998) in Esoterica 2 (1999): online at www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/AllenReview.html
Review of Timothy J. Reiss, Knowledge, discovery and imagination in early modern Europe: The rise of aesthetic rationalism (New York and Cambridge, 1997) in Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999): 513-514.
Double review of Antonino Poppi, L’etica del rinascimento tra Platone e Aristotele, Il pensiero e la storia, 29 (Naples, 1997) and Christine Raffini, Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione: Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism, Renaissance and Baroque: Studies and Texts, 21 (New York, Washington, D.C., etc, 1998) in Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 501-504.
Review of L. Valcke and R. Galibois, Le périple intellectuel de Jean Pic de la Mirandole, in Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 968-9.
Publications – Under Contract
Books:
Co-editor and translator, with Anna Mastrogianni, Petrus Crinitus, De poetis latinis (On Latin Poets), under contract with Harvard University Press (as of Spring, 2007, text and draft translation complete; expected submission of MS late 2008)
Co-editor and translator, with Anthony T. Grafton, Angelo Decembrio, De politia literaria (excerpted) under contract with Harvard University Press (as of Summer, 2008, text and draft translation complete; expected submission of MS Spring, 2009)
Editor, Angelo Poliziano’s Lamia in Context, under contract with Brill (expected submission of MS Fall, 2008).
Editor and translator, Angelo Poliziano, Prefaces, Lectures, and Orations, under contract with Harvard University Press.
The Lost Italian Renaissance: A Sourcebook, under contract with Prentice Hall.
Articles:
“Firenze, 1444: orazioni in morte di Leonardo Bruni pronunciate da Giannozzo Manetti e Poggio Bracciolini,” under contract in Sergio Luzzatto e Gabriele Pedullà, eds., Atlante storico della letteratura italiana (Einaudi, 2009): 6000 words.
“Firenze, 1463: attorno a Marsilio Ficino si costituisce l’Accademia platonica,” under contract in Sergio Luzzatto e Gabriele Pedullà, eds., Atlante storico della letteratura italiana (Einaudi, 2009): 6000 words.
Papers presented:
Invited lectures at: University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2008); Sassoferrato, (2008); Stanford University (2006); University of Connecticut (2006); Harvard University, history (2005); University of Pennsylvania, history (2005); Duke Univ. (2004); UNC-Chapel Hill, classics (2004); Univ. of Connecticut (2004); Yale University (2003); Johns Hopkins Univ. (2003); Bristol Univ. (2003); East Carolina Univ. (2003); Herzog August Bibliothek (2003); Clare College, Cambridge Univ. (2003); Central Michigan University (2002); Slovenian National Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000); University of Florence (1999); Penn State Univ. (1998); Univ. of Ohio, Athens (1998); Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1996)
Keynote Speaker at “Hellenism in the Renaissance,” a conference held at Princeton University, April, 2007.
Invited plenary speaker at Latinitas Perennis, II, Royal Academy, Brussels, Belgium, March, 2007.
Invited plenary speaker at “The Rebirth of Platonic Theology,” a conference held at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, April, 2007, Florence, Italy.
Invited plenary speaker at “Radical Philology,” a conference held at Concordia University, Montreal, December, 2006.
Invited participant at a multi-year project based in Berlin at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte: “Before Copernicus” (December, 2007; August, 2007; etc.)
One of four plenary speakers for the panel, “Renewing Humanities Scholarship,” American Council of Learned Societies Meeting, 2005.
One of four plenary speakers for the panel, “Translation,” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Fall, 2005.
Regular presenter at Renaissance Society of America annual meeting, 1996-present; semi-regular at Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference; occasional presenter at American Historical Association; occasional presenter at International Medieval Studies Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Present Research Projects:
Intellectuals and Language in the Italian Renaissance. Current book project.
Other interests include the life and work of Lorenzo Valla, the history of Renaissance libraries and library culture, institutionalization of disciplines, manuscript studies and paleography, the history of philosophy.
Courses Taught at Johns Hopkins University:
Director, Johns Hopkins Spring Seminar in Florence, Villa Spelman, 2007
Graduate Seminar, Platonism in the Italian Renaissance
Graduate Seminar, Italian Humanism from Petrarch to Poliziano
Graduate Seminar, Writers and Readers in Pre-Modern Europe
Graduate Seminar, Angelo Poliziano’s Lamia
Undergraduate Course, Machiavelli in Context
Undergraduate Course, The Intellectual World of the Italian Renaissance
Undergraduate course, Co-Instructor in “Great Books”
(Extra teaching), Latin reading group
Courses taught at Michigan State University, History Department:
(Extra teaching) Optional reading group in late medieval and Renaissance Latin for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates, 1997-2004 (one hour a week).
Graduate Seminar: “Introduction to Historical Method.”
Graduate Seminar: “Humanism, Philosophy, and Reform in Early Modern Europe.”
Graduate Seminar: “The Lost Literature of Western Europe.”
Undergraduate Honors Seminar: “Witchcraft, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700.”
“Michigan State in Rome.” Topic: Medieval and Renaissance Rome, in Rome, Summer, 1997 and Summer, 1998. Program director.
Undergraduate Seminar: “The Autobiographical Tradition in Western Literature from Antiquity Through the Renaissance.”
Undergraduate lecture course (Junior level): “Europe, 1500-1700.”
Undergraduate lecture course (Junior level): “The Italian Renaissance in Context.”
Undergraduate lecture course (introductory survey): “European History to 1500.”
Other teaching:
Founding director of the Summer Program in Applied Paleography, American Academy in Rome, Summer 2002, 2003, 2005.
Professional Service and Memberships:
Director, Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe at Johns Hopkins University, 2008 – present.
Faculty Editorial Board, Johns Hopkins University Press, Fall 2007 – present.
Named to Executive Board, Renaissance Society of America, 2006 – present.
Elected Discipline Representative for the classical tradition, 2003-06, Renaissance Society of America, and member of editorial advisory board for Renaissance Quarterly.
Member of editorial board for Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, general editor Arjo Vanderjagt, 2005 – present
Member of Editorial Committee, Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (a series of volumes, begun in the 1950s by Paul Oskar Kristeller and others, designed to trace the influence of classical texts through the middle ages and Renaissance, now edited by Virginia Brown [Toronto, Pontifical Institute] and James Hankins [Harvard University]), 2006 – present.
Member of editorial board, 1999-present: Esoterica, an on-line journal hosted by Michigan State University devoted to the study of the western esoteric tradition.
Member: Renaissance Society of America, Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, Societé Marsile Ficin, International Society for Intellectual History, Modern Language Association, and American Historical Association.
Chair of Jury, American Academy in Rome, 2002 competition for the Rome prizes (post-doctoral and pre-doctoral) in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
Session chair at Renaissance Society of America meeting (2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006), and Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, (2000, 2003, 2004).
Regular referee for article submissions to Renaissance Quarterly (1997-present). Referee for Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome (June, 1998 and August, 2001), and Esoterica (May, 1999).
Referee for book manuscripts for the University of Michigan Press (December, 1997, October, 2003); Indiana University Press (April, 2002); Medieval and Renaissance Texts Series (May, 2002; June, 2002); University of Pennsylvania Press (July, 2002); Johns Hopkins University Press (January, 2006); Brill (2006, 2007); Harvard University Press (2007).
Referee for book proposals submitted to Routledge Press (Summer, 1998); Cambridge University Press (Summer, 2000); and Yale University Press (November, 2004; December, 2004).
Textbook referee for Longman Publishing (November, 2000), Oxford University Press (April, 2001), Bedford St. Martin’s (September, 2002), and Prentice Hall (2003).
