Curriculum Vitae - Scuola Normale Superiore

Curriculum
Vitae
Personal information
First name / Surname
Umberto Grassi
Nationality Italy
Date of birth 15-09-1977
Work experience
Dates Nov. 2012/Nov. 2013
Title of qualification Research fellow
Principal subjects Muslims and Christians in Early Modern Period. Interactions and
Representations
Name and type of Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa)
organisation providing
education and training Within the FIRB project: Beyond "Holy War". Managing Conflicts
and Crossing Cultural Borders between Christendom and Islam
from the Mediterranean to the extra-European World: Mediation,
Transfer, Conversion (XVth-XIXth Century).
Education and training
Dates 14 Nov. 2011
Title of qualification PHD
Principal subjects L'Offitio sopra l'Onestà. Il controllo della sodomia nella Lucca del
Cinquecento
(Professor Adriano Prosperi)
Name and type of Università di Pisa
organisation providing
education and training
Dates 2009/2010
Title of qualification Recherches doctorales libres
Name and type of EHESS, Paris
organisation providing
education and training
Dates 12 Nov. 2002
Title of qualification BA
Principal subjects L'Offitio sopra l'Onestà. La repressione della sodomia nella Lucca
del Cinquecento.
(Professor Adriano Prosperi)
Name and type of Università di Pisa
organisation providing
education and training 110 e lode
Academic Conferences
10-11 Feb. 2014
International Workshop, Christian Islamic Interactions: Mobility,
Connection, Transformation (1450-1800), Scuola Normale
Superiore di Pisa.
Paper presented: 'La sodomia no era pecado': sessualità illecita
tra cristiani e musulmani nel mondo iberico di età moderna.
19 Nov. 2012
Seminário permanente sobre a Inquisção. IV sessão, Universidade
de Évora.
Paper presented: 'Las Inquisiciónes' en Italia y el "vicio
abominable" de la sodomía.
19-20 May 2014
Seminário permanente. As nobrezas do sul da Europa: modelos,
práticas, estruturas e sistemas de representação nos siculos XVXVIII. VII seminário: Nobreza, impureza de sangue e crimes
nefandos.
Paper to be presented: Sexo y autoridad. Nobleza, honor
masculino y sodomía en el mundo mediterráneo (siglos XVIXVII).
Pubblications
Books
L'Offitio sopra l'Onestà. Il controllo della sodomia nella Lucca del
Cinquecento, Milano, Mimesis, forthcoming (Award winner:
Premio studi GLBTQ 2012, Circolo Maurice, Torino)
ISBN: 9788857523439
Il peccato di Sodoma. Crimini contro natura e omosessualità dal
mondo tardo antico all'epoca moderna, Roma, Carocci,
forthcoming (under contract).
Le trasgressioni della carne. Omoerotismo tra Crsitianesimo e
Islam dal Medioevo all'età contemporanea, editor (with Giuseppe
Marcocci), Roma, Viella, forthcoming (under contract).
Articles
in refereed journals
L'Offitio sopra l'Honestà. La repressione della sodomia nella
Lucca del Cinquecento (1551-1580), in «Studi Storici. Rivista
trimestrale dell'Istituto Gramsci», n° 1, anno 48, Roma, 2007, pp.
129-159.
Reviews
A. Prosperi, V. Lavenia, J. Tedeschi, Dizionario storico
dell'Inquisizione, Pisa 2010, in «Actum Luce. Rivista di studi lucchesi», n°
2, anno 26, 2007 (published in 2011), pp. 147-150.
Personal skills and
competences
Mother tongue(s)
Italian
Other language(s)
English, Spanish, French
Latin
Awards
Premio studi GLBTQ 2012, Circolo Maurice, Torino.
Track-Record
Umberto Grassi earned a degree in Early Modern History at the University of Pisa in 2002, under
the direction of the world-wide-known historian prof. Adriano Prosperi. Grassi’s curriculum has
revealed a wide range of cultural interests, ranging from social, cultural and religious history to the
history of gender and sexuality. His innovative dissertation focused on the control of sodomy in
Early Modern Italy and was summarized in an important article published in the refereed Italian
journal Studi Storici in 2007. He went on studying this innovative topic during his PHD course. He
achieved the PHD in 2011 with a thesis titled L’Offitio sopra l’Onestà. Il controllo della sodomia
nella Lucca del Cinquecento. Besides the supervision of prof. Prosperi, he benefited also from the
advice of prof. Michael Rocke, author of Forbidden Friendships (New York/Oxford 1996), the
milestone in the field of historical studies on homosexuality in Renaissance Italy. Grassi
accomplished part of his training at the prestigious EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales) in Paris, hosted by prof. Simona Cerutti. The PHD thesis had been awarded within the
LGBTQ contest promoted by the Maurice LGBTQ association (Turin). The work will be published
soon in the innovative LGBTI series by the Italian editor Mimesis. Prof. Rocke wrote in his preface
to the book: “In delving deeply into this society’s sexual underground, Grassi produces fascinating
glimpses of lived experiences as well as new historical perspectives […] Grassi also engages
intelligently with the international – and often acrimonious – historiographical debates since the
1980s around the origins and nature of emerging sexual identities before the nineteenth century […]
Umberto Grassi’s study is therefore much more than a mere local history or a voyeuristic look at
small-town deviance in the Renaissance. It is a multi-faceted and captivating work that significantly
advances our knowledge and understanding of same-sex relations and unauthorized sex more
generally in the Early modern world.”
Grassi today has widened his field of research, focusing on the intersections between gender
studies, history of sexuality and the new historiographical research on Chrstian-Islamic crosscultural interactions. He developed this original perspective within the FIRB project Beyond the
Holy War: Managing Conflicts and Crossing Cultural Borders between Christendom and Islam
from the Mediterranean to the extra-European World: Mediation, Transfer, Conversion (XVthXIXth Century) as a research fellow based on the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. The
FIRB, comprising three Unit (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, La Sapienza of Rome and the
University of Palermo) started in 2008 and gathered together many young researchers. A recent
international workshop in Pisa, Christian Islamic Interactions: Mobility, Connection,
Transformation (1450-1800), shown some of the project’s main scientific results, collecting the
papers of both up and coming investigators and prominent professors. The world-wide perspective
of the project has been testified also by the cooperation with renown international research centre
such as the Departamento de Estudios Arabes of the Consejo Superior de Investigación Científica
(Spain), and the Latin American Studies Center of the University of Toronto (Canada). Grassi’s
research, based on Madrid’s National Archive documents, revealed still unknown inquisitorial
cases, involving heretics who claimed, at the same time, for a less restraining sexual morality
(which included also tolerant attitudes toward homosexuality), and a pacific coexistence between
the three main Mediterranean monotheistic religions. This promising inquiry is opening a new
chapter in the well-founded tradition of the historical studies on the idea of “Tolerance”. Grassi is
presently under contract with two Italian publisher, leaders in the field of historical studies: Viella
and Carocci. For the first one he is editor, with Giuseppe Marcocci, of a forthcoming collective
volume on homosexual relationships between Muslims and Christians, which collect contributions
of some of the most relevant international experts on the topic, such as E.K. Rowson, Associate
Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University and co-author of the
groundbreaking Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature (New York 1997). For Carocci,
Grassi is writing a monograph on the history of the control of sodomy in the Christian Western
World from the Late Antiquity to the 19th century.