Dr Carlotta Moro

As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the UKRI-funded project ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,’ I aim to uncover women’s contributions to philosophy – and particularly to natural philosophy – in seventeenth-century Italy, as well as their transnational exchanges with female intellectuals. I am writing a monograph on The Religious Writings of Lucrezia Marinella (ca. 1571/9-1653): Feminism, Theology, Philosophy (Amsterdam University Press), editing the Special Issue of Renaissance Studies on 'Moderata Fonte (1555-92): Feminism, Genres and Networks,' and producing a bilingual critical edition of Camilla Bonfiglio's Book in Praise of Women and On the Cruelty of Men for The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Iter Press). I am also examining the writings produced by female members of the Paduan Accademia dei Ricovrati and the Roman Accademia dell’Arcadia.

I received my PhD in Italian at the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, where I have also worked as a Teaching Assistant. My AHRC-funded thesis, titled Faith and Feminism: Mysticism, Theology and the Bible in the Works of Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella, explores Moderata Fonte’s (1555-1592) and Lucrezia Marinella’s (c.1571-1653) dialogue with the querelle des femmes and the sacred sphere, illuminating their pro-woman engagement with the Scriptures, theology, and a genealogy of female martyrs, mystics, and foundresses of religious orders.

Beyond this, I have also published on Carla Lonzi, Elena Ferrante, and on the reception of Renaissance pro-woman thought within twentieth-century Italian feminism, and I remain interested in these fields.