Eleonora Cappuccilli

Research project

My contribution to the research project The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden: Women, Politics, and Reform in Renaissance Italy deals specifically with the political meaning of female prophecy in early modern times. I am investigaing the impact of Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes on women’s prophetic experience in the first four decades of the sixteenth century, when Birgitta’s fortune was rich and majestic. I am focusing on three case studies, i.e. Domenica Narducci of Paradiso (1473-1533), Caterina Mattei of Racconigi (1486-1547), and Paola Antonia Negri (1508-1555), which shed light on an important part of the reception and re-mediation of both Birgitta’s writings and her prophetic model itself. The analysis of the case studies, which present very clear connections with the figure of Birgitta, will be a first step towards a fuller reconstruction of the more general picture of the widespread influence of Birgittine ideas on the Italian thought as a whole before the Counter-Reformation.

Academic interests

• English political thought in early modern era, with a focus on women’s political discourse and the origin of the public sphere
• Constitutional history
• The concept of prophecy and female prophetism in Renaissance and early modern Europe
• Western political theology in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
• Contemporary feminist theory
• Marxian theory

Background

• 2019 Visiting scholar at University of California - Berkeley, under the supervision of Professor Victoria Kahn
• 2018 Post-doc research grant at the Edith Saurer Foundation (Austria)

Project: From Public Authority to Private Marginality? Early Modern Women Prophets in Italy and England

• 2018 Post-doc scholarship at the Filippo Burzio Foundation (Italy)

Project: Witch and Saint. Caterina Mattei and Female Prophecy in Early Modern Piedmont

• 2016 PhD in Politics, Institutions and History, Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna

Dissertation: Between God and the Public Sphere. Mary Astell in English Constitutional History

• 2012 MA degree in International Relations, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bologna

Thesis: Social Citizenship in Feminist Contemporary Reflection

• 2009 BA degree in International Studies, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bologna

Thesis: Security and Securitization: Changes in Political Discourse

Positions held

• Member of the editorial board of the academic journal "Scienza & Politica. Per una storia delle dottrine"
• Member of the international research group EMoDiR (Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism) 
• Member of Renaissance Society of America
• Member of European Academy of Religion
• Referee for the academic journal "Storia del pensiero politico"

Scholarships and grants

• January 2018 Grant for collaborative projects provided by the Academy for Global Humanities and Critical Theories.
• June-July 2017 Sovereignty and Social Movements. Summer School in Global Studies and Critical Theories, University of Bologna.
• September 2011 Liberty/Liberation. Summer School of the Italian Society of Women Historians, Centro Studi Fiesole, Florence.
• November 2011 'From generation to generation. Italian women from the Unification up to today', University of Florence.