Federica Francesconi
Dr. Francesconi (PhD, University of Haifa) teaches a broad variety of courses in Jewish history and cultures, European social history, women and gender studies, Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, Israeli culture, and material culture. Her research and publications address the social, religious, and cultural aspects of the early modern history of Jews in Italy, focusing on the multifaceted politics and dynamics of ghetto life. She has held fellowships in Europe, Israel, and the United States. She served as Viterbi Visiting Professor in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been a fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as well as the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Prior to joining the University at Albany, she was Assistant Professor of History and the Chair in Judaic Studies at The College of Idaho.
Her new book, Invisible Enlighteners: The Jewish Merchants of Modena, from the Renaissance to the Emancipation (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), is the 2022 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize Winner, granted by the American Historical Association and the 2021 National Jewish Books Awards Finalist for the JDC-Herbert Katzki Award for Writing Based on Archival Material. Among her other publications, there are two coedited volumes: From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardi Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times (2018) and Jewish Women's History from Antiquity to the Present (2021). The latter is the 2021 National Jewish Books Awards Finalist for the Barbara Dobkin Award in Women Studies. She is currently at work on a new monograph, provisionally titled “The Jewish Home in Early Modern Venice: Cosmopolitan Intimacy, Global Networks, and Diasporic Material Culture.” This project has received the 2012-14 Gladys Krieble Delmas Grant. Francesconi is also Associate Editor and Book Review Editor of the journal Jewish History and one of the co-founders of The New York State Working Group on Jewish Women and Gender in Global Perspective.