Mackenney, Richard S.

Professor
Ph.D., University of Cambridge,1982
Italian Renaissance, Early Modern Venice, Shakespeare.
Office: LT 807
Phone: (607) 777-4421   E-mail:  rmackenn@binghamton.edu

Research Interests:

I am currently working on two book projects.

1. Public and Private in Renaissance Venice will argue that although Venice was by no means a "democratic" state, there were many ways in which people who were not members of the ruling class could identify with the state in an extensive penumbra of the 'semi-public'. The book will suggest that the balance between public and private changed decisively in the early seventeenth century as the state became increasingly secretive in its operations, a process observable in the so-called 'Spanish' conspiracy of 1618 and the stiffening of family ties in the corporations.
2. Renaissance Resonances. This book will focus on the topicality of the Renaissance for us in defining the world in which we live. While there are important instances of messages to posterity from members of 'dead white male elites' in Italy, the Renaissance exploded before a popular audience in Shakespeare's London -- and we are part of that audience. The concept of 'resonances' gives attention to some striking similarities of ideas, perceptions, voices and dreams across the centuries, an approach which draws on the work of scholars such as Stephen Greenblatt and Frances Yates.

Significant Publications

Books:

• Renaissances. The Cultures of Italy, c.1300-c.1600 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
• Co-editor, Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, Vols. 79 to 85 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995-2001).
• Sixteenth Century Europe: Expansion and Conflict (London: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), translated into Spanish (1996), Polish (1997), Czech (2001), and Russian (forthcoming).
• The City-State, 1500-1700 (London: Macmillan, 1989).
• Tradesmen and Traders. The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c.1250-c.1650 (London: Croom Helm, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1987).

Recent Articles and Book Chapters:

• 'Venice,' in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (Oxford University Press, 2003).
• 'Guilds' and 'Industry,' in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, et al., 6 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1999).
• 'The scuole piccole of Venice: Formations and Transformations,' in Nicholas Terpstra (ed.), The Politics of Ritual Kinship. Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 172-89.
• '"A Plot Discover'd?" Myth, Legend and the "Spanish" Conspiracy against Venice, 1618,' in John Martin and Dennis Romano (eds.), Venice Reconsidered (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp.185-216.
• 'Public and Private in Renaissance Venice,' Renaissance Studies, 12 (1998), pp.109-30.
• 'The Guilds of Venice: State and Society in the longue durée,' Studi Veneziani, n.s.34 (1997), pp.15-44.