(Oxford Brookes University)
“‘From a Distance it Looks like a Castle’: Contagion, communities and confinement in early modern Venice”
The first, permanent plague hospitals (lazaretti), founded in Venice during the fifteenth century have often been seen as emblematic of the exceptional, desperate measures adopted for public health for the plague. This paper illustrates, however, that the lazaretti were not so distinct in their design as has been assumed. Instead, the sites show a number of parallels with other religious, charitable and medical institutions of the early modern city, which can be linked broadly by an ‘architecture of protection’. These sites contained groups which were considered potentially dangerous but useful, including German merchants, Jewish bankers and the Christian sick. Contemporary metaphors of warehouses, prisons and castles were often used to describe these very different sites and these images illustrated the need for protection and the value of the contents of these institutions. The paper illustrates the utility of considering medical institutions in context, in order to understand more fully the broad nature of strategies for healing and public health during the early modern period and to highlight the connections drawn between architecture, space and health within these institutions.
Please provide a short a biography including research interests (of up to 200 words), along with key publications
Jane Stevens Crawshaw is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at Oxford Brookes University.Before coming to Oxford Brookes, Jane was the Rubinstein Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the Society for Renaissance Studies. Prior to this she was a Teaching Fellow in Early Modern History at the University of St Andrews (2007-8). She completed her MPhil (2003-4) and PhD (2004-8) at the University of Cambridge and her MA (1999-2003) at the University of Edinburgh.
She has been the recipient of an early career scholarship from the Istituto Datini in Prato and an award for independent research from the Gladys Krieble Delmas foundation.She is on the council of the Society for Renaissance Studies and the Advisory Board for the International Network for the History of Hospitals.
Her research interests are in public health, marginal social groups, urban space and the environment in early modern Europe, particularly Italy.
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