As an affiliated society of the American Historical Association (AHA), the SIHS holds an annual meeting in conjunction with that of the AHA, marked by at least one academic session, a business meeting, and a social hour. The following are SIHS’ sponsored panels and other events for the January 2027 AHA conference.
Sponsored Panels: AHA 2027
The Grand Tour and Italian Studies: What Can We Learn from 18th-Century Travel to Italy?
Society for Italian Historical Studies 1
Thursday, January 7, 2027: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Balcony M (New Orleans Marriott, 4th Floor)
Chair:
John Brewer, California Institute of Technology
Papers:
Paola Bertucci, Yale University
Giovanna Ceserani, Stanford University
Luca Piccoli, Università della Svizzera Italiana
Comment: John Brewer, California Institute of Technology
- 1527: The Quincentennial of a Turbulent Year, Part 1: 1527: The Quincentennial of a Turbulent Year, Part 1: Making Sense of the Sack—From Rome to Provence
AHA Session 102
German Studies Association 1
Society for Italian Historical Studies 2
Society for Reformation Research 1
Friday, January 8, 2027: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Studio 9 (New Orleans Marriott, 2nd Floor)
Chair: Margaret H. Meserve, University of Notre Dame
Papers:
“Hell Is a More Beautiful Thing to See”: Accounts from the Sack of Rome
Jessica Goethals, University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa
Crisis in the Respublica Christiana: Jacopo Sadoleto’s View of Christian Society Before and After the Sack of Rome
Elizabeth M. McCahill, University of Massachusetts Boston
The Persisting Legacy of 1527: Memory of the Sack of Rome and Fear of Foreign Invasion in Mid-16th-Century Italy
Antonio Pattori, University of Oxford and British School at Rome
Session Abstract
This panel, the first in a series, provides case studies of how Italians throughout the peninsula reacted to the 1527 Sack of Rome, both in its immediate aftermath and over the next several decades. Jessica Goethals will introduce the Sack through the eyes of Marcello Alberini, a Roman patrician who recorded events for his family. Elizabeth McCahill will discuss the ways in which Jacopo Sadoleto, papal secretary to Clement VII, used the concept of the respublica Christianain efforts to forestall the Sack and then to imagine recovery from it. Antonio Pattori will weave together varied testimonies as to how, in the 1540s and 1550s, political views around the renewed crisis between Emperor and Pope were shaped by the trauma and memory of 1527. In short, the panel explores the Sack not just as a catastrophic event but as one that shaped family memory, ecclesiology, and political perspectives for many decades.
- 1527: The Quincentennial of a Turbulent Year, Part 2: 1527: The Quincentennial of a Turbulent Year, Part 2: Making Sense of the Sack—Italian Perspectives
AHA Session 127
German Studies Association 2
Society for Italian Historical Studies 3
Society for Reformation Research 2
Friday, January 8, 2027: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Studio 9 (New Orleans Marriott, 2nd Floor)
Chair: Stefania Tutino, University of California, Los Angeles
Papers:
Machiavelli, the Sack of Rome, and Philosophical Rupture
William J. Connell, Seton Hall University
Invoking the Sack of Rome at a Distance: Giulio Clovio and the Canons Regular at Santa Maria Maggiore in Treviso, 1532
Elena Calvillo, University of Richmond
“Delle Guerre Di Qua”: The Sack of Rome, Crisis, and Commercial Correspondence
Nicholas Scott Baker, University of Richmond
Session Abstract
This panel, the second in a series, provides case studies of how Italians reacted to the 1527 Sack of Rome, both in its immediate aftermath and over the next several decades. William Connell explores how both Machiavelli’s writings (which he was arranging for publication in the spring of 1527) and the Sack served as caesuras in the European consciousness. Elena Cavillo examines how the artist Giulio Clovio’s account of the Sack contributed to his defense of the centrality of cult images, most particularly the image of the Madonna Grande at Santa Maria Maggiore, Treviso. Finally, Nicholas Baker considers how Florentine merchants included responses to the Sack in their business letters, interpolating their assessments of currents events into their more personal and immediate concerns. In short, the panel explores the Sack not just as a catastrophic event but as one that impacted how Italians thought about history and political theory, icons and their veneration, and their own daily business.
The Legal Intimacies of Welfare In 20th-Century Italy and Its Colonies
Society for Italian Historical Studies 4
Friday, January 8, 2027: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Regent (New Orleans Marriott, 4th Floor)
Chair:
Molly Tambor, Long Island University Post
Papers:
The Disease of the Divers: A Forensic Autopsy of Italy’s Forgotten Fifth Shore, 1904–27
Nancy Ko, Columbia University
Committing the Children: Families, Asylums, and the State, Italy 1900–40
Linda Reeder, University of Missouri
“Precocious,” “Morbid,” and “Savage”: Governing Child Sexuality in Italy’s Church–State Welfare Regime, 1953–70
Lucas René Ramos, Columbia University
Comment: Molly Tambor, Long Island University Post
- 1527: The Quincentennial of a Turbulent Year, Part 3: 1527: The Quincentennial of a Turbulent Year, Part 3: 1527 from Peru to Zurich
AHA Session 154
German Studies Association 3
Society for Italian Historical Studies 5
Society for Reformation Research 3
Friday, January 8, 2027: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Studio 9 (New Orleans Marriott, 2nd Floor)
Panel:
Ann M. Blair, Harvard University
Anja-Silvia Goeing, University of Zurich and Harvard University
Anthony T. Grafton, Princeton University
Carina L. Johnson, Pitzer College
Manny Medrano, Harvard University
Brian W. Ogilvie, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Chair: Elizabeth M. McCahill, University of Massachusetts Boston
Session Abstract
This lightning session will illuminate some of the conflicts and controversies of the year 1527 through a series of evocative snapshots. Contributors will consider how Erasmus interpreted the Sack of Rome; how biblical study and Anabaptist persecution coexisted in 1527 Zurich; how the Sack interrupted the antiquarian and philological work of Roman humanists; how it functioned as part of collective memory in the Holy Roman Empire; how the theology faculties of continental universities were crafting arguments that would prove relevant to Henry VIII’s divorce debacle; how Incan and colonial historical records provide unique challenges of historical reconstruction; and how universities were laying the groundwork for breakthroughs in the natural sciences. Because each speaker will only talk for a few minutes, there will be ample time for discussion among the panelists and with the audience about 1527 as a year of rupture and intellectual ferment.
Violence, Fascism, and Resistance in Modern Italy and Its Empire
Society for Italian Historical Studies 6
Friday, January 8, 2027: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Regent (New Orleans Marriott, 4th Floor)
Chair:
Marline Sylta Otte, Tulane University
Papers:
Suppressing Satire: Political Violence Against Mussolini’s Comic Critics
Benedetta Luciana Sara Carnaghi, University of South Florida
“Down with the Diana Murderers!” Italian Anarchism and the Paradoxes of Revolutionary Violence, 1920–22
William Whitham, University of Texas at Austin
Politics of Forgetting, Politics of Remembering: Transnationalism, Identity, and Intimate Histories of Colonialism
Mary Jane Dempsey, Stony Brook University, State University of New York
Slow Violence and the Infrastructure of Italian Capitalism in Africa
Angelo Caglioti, Barnard College
War, Resistance, and Epistemicide: Political Violences in Italian Colonial Libya, 1911–31
Will O’Brien, University of Notre Dame
Comment: Federico Marcon, Princeton University
Antisemitism in Fascist Italy, the Vatican, and Postwar Justice: New Research from the Vatican Archives
American Catholic Historical Association 35
Society for Italian Historical Studies 7
Saturday, January 9, 2027: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Napoleon Ballroom D1 (Sheraton New Orleans, 3rd Floor)
Chair:
Kevin Madigan, Harvard University
Papers:
The Vatican and the Italian Racial Laws of 1938
David Kertzer, Brown University
The Pope Against Nuremberg: The Vatican and Postwar Justice
Gerald Steinacher, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Comment: Roy Domenico, University of Scranton and Martin R. Menke, Rivier University
Presidential Publishing Panel
Society for Italian Historical Studies 8
Central European History Society 6
Saturday, January 9, 2027: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Balcony N (New Orleans Marriott, 4th Floor)
Chair:
James A. Palmer, Grinnell College
Papers:
Panel Discussion
Liz Friend Smith, Cambridge University Press
Panel Discussion
Rita A. Krueger, Temple University
Panel Discussion
Stephen Shapiro, University of Toronto Press
Panel Discussion
Stefania Tutino, University of California, Los Angeles
SIHS Business Meeting
Saturday, January 9, 2027: 6:30 PM-7:30 PM
Studio 6 (New Orleans Marriott, 2nd Floor)
Chair:
Stefania Tutino, University of California, Los Angeles
Presiding:
James A. Palmer, Grinnell College
Previous SIHS-AHA Panels
- 2026 Panels
- 2025 Panels
- 2024 Panels
- 2023 Panels
- 2021-2022 Panels (Pre-Virtual)
- 2020 Panels