HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA | CANADA B3H 4P9 | +1 (902) 494-2011

Gregory Hanlon

University Research Professor

Office: 3176 McCain Arts & Social Science Building
Office Hours:  By Appointment
Email: gregory.hanlon@dal.ca
Tel: 902-494-3642 (v)
902-494-3349 (fax)

  
TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

Early modern Italy; early modern France; behavioural history; religious behaviour; baroque civilization; war & society; crime & punishment; material culture & display; human ethology & social psychology. History from Darwin

PUBLICATIONS

Books

      


1) Vita Rurale in Terra Di Siena Nel Seicento Natura.,
Pascal Editrice, 2008. 
Italian Translation 



    

2) Human Nature in Rural Tuscany: an early modern history., Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007. (Italian translation completed, by dott. Simone Caffari)
  

3) The Origins of Modern Italy 1550-1800; Three seasons in European History , London & New York,  Palgrave, 2000 (Italian translation, Il Mulino, Storia dell’Italia moderna, Bologna, 2002)
Italian Translation

 

4) The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts, 1560-1800, London, University College London Press, (now Taylor & Francis) 1998

         

        


5) Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France:  Catholic and Protestant coexistence in  Aquitaine, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, 312 pp.

      

6) L'Univers des gens de bien:  Culture et comportements des elites urbaines en Agenais-Condomois au XVlle siecle, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1989, 391 pp.

 

 

Reference Work

Early Modern Italy: A Comprehensive Bibliography in English and French, 10,098 titles, containing in addition an extended historiographical survey of the literature (with maps & graphs) on 499 pages, published electronically at www.EarlyModernItaly.com, 9th edition, January 2006.

Major Articles since 1997

The Facts of Life in Rural Counter-Reformation TuscanyJournal of Interdisciplinary History, XL 2009, pp. 1-31 

The Italian States, in A Companion to Eighteenth-century Europe, ed. Peter H. Wilson, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford 2008, pp. 304-321 

In praise of refeudalization: Princes and feudataries in north-central Italy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Sociability and its discontents: civil society, social capital and their alternatives in Early Modern Europe, Nicholas Eckstein & Nicholas Terpstra eds, Brepols, Turnhout (forthcoming, 2009).

La décadence rurale du Seicento italien, accepted in a volume in honour of Prof. Jean-Pierre Poussou, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris (forthcoming 2009)

Decline of the Italian military aristocracy: from sword to surplice, Italian Politics and Society, #60, Spring 2005, pp. 52-57

La féodalité bénigne d’un fief toscan au XVIIe siècle, Pouvoirs, contestations et comportements dans l’Europe moderne: Mélanges en l’honneur du professeur Yves-Marie Bercé, Paris, Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2005, pp. 881-893.

Justice in the age of lordship: a feudal court in Tuscany during the Medici era (1619-1666), Sixteenth Century Journal, 35, 2004, pp. 1005-1033.

Glorifying War in a peaceful city: Festive representation of combat in Baroque Siena (1590-1740), War in History, 11, 2004, 249-77.

L’équilibre confessionnel en Aquitaine au lendemain de l’Edit de Nantes: Un tableau en demi-teintes, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 160, 2003, pp. 629-40.

Infanticidio dei coppie sposati nella Toscana moderna, secoli XVI-XVIII, Quaderni Storici, 38, #113, 2003, pp. 453-498.

The Decline of Violence in Early Modern Italy: a model, G. Ruggiero ed., The Blackwell Companion to Renaissance Studies, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2002, pp. 139-155.

La fin de la vocation militaire de la noblesse italienne, Histoire socioculturelle des armées: Centre d’études d’histoire de la défense, cahier #7, Vincennes, 1998, pp. 29-42.

The Demilitarization of an Italian Provincial Nobility; Siena 1560-1740, Past and Present, #155, 1997 pp. 64-108.

Recent Encyclopedia Articles

Italian Wars (1494-1559); Early Modern Italy; Milan; Europe 1450 to 1789: Enclyclopedia of the Early Modern World, Scribner's, New York, 2003.

4:  Book-length Research Projects

Bella Figura: craving admiration in Baroque Italy

The Hero of Italy: Odoardo Farnese, duke of Parma, his soldiers & his subjects in the Thirty Years War (1635-1637)

5:   Prizes & Distinctions

1984   Prix Tonnadre; 5,000 FF awarded by the Société académique d’Agen, for my thesis, Culture et comportements des élites urbaines en Agenais-Condomois au 17e siècle           

1989    Canada Research Fellowship (declined, in order to take the position at Dalhousie University).

1992    Brewer Prize; $1,000 U.S., awarded by the American Society for Church History, for the best book manuscript in any field of religious history in 1992

1995    Runner-up (after initial tie) for the prize awarded by the American Huguenot Society for the book, Confessions and Community in Seventeenth-century Aquitaine

1998    Marraro Prize; $500.00 U.S., awarded by the Society for Italian Historical Studies, for the best book in Italian history published in 1998, Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats & European Conflicts

2003    SSHRC High Performer, designated such by a doctoral research project by A. Chawla, under the direction of Dr. Steven Cronshaw, Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology, University of Guelph.

2006    Dalhousie University Research Professor

2007    International conference around my book:  The Twilight of a Military Tradition, at Reggia di Venaria, Italy.  30 November - 1 December 2007, entitled Riflessioni sulla "Piedmontese exception."  Acts published under the title Il Piemonte come eccezione?
Paola Bianchi ed., Torino. 2008

 

Graduate teaching

I will consider the files of students desiring to work on diverse aspects of early modern Italy (circa 1550 to 1795).  Graduate teaching will focus on the most common kinds of archival sources available and the ways historians use them, so students will receive training in 16th and 17th-century palaeography, that is, mastery of handwriting forms from the period. While historiography and the literature is not neglected, special emphasis will be placed on the contribution of a variety of behavioural sciences to the study of historical problems. These include the classic disciplines of sociology (Raymond Boudon especially), social psychology, anthropology on the one hand, and the more recent disciplines of primate and human ethology and evolutionary psychology on the other.  Behavioral Science titles for Historians

A reading ability in French is necessary from the outset, and reading ability in Italian must be acquired soon after. A reading ability in Latin is encouraged, and is required for many topics.


Topics supervised to date:

Town government in Aquitaine during the Thirty Years War (M.A.) James Logan

Bandits in rural southern Tuscany circa 1700 (M.A.) Peter Cullen

Italian aristocrats in Habsburg armies (Spain & Austria) (M.A.) Elmar Henrich

Aristocratic lineage in north-central Italy (M.A.) Edward Michalek

The social world of medical personnel in Farnese Parma (M.A.) Elizabeth Maynes

Capital executions in Farnese Parma (M.A.) Brad Meredith

Routine infanticide by married couples in Parma, 16th - 18th century (M.A.) Laura Hynes

The world of books and reading in Farnese Parma (PhD) Federica Dallasta

How a city functioned: Piacenza 1550-1750 (PhD) Cheryl Bradbee

 

Dalhousie Graduate Research on Baroque Italy
Click here to view



Encouraged research areas: 

Popular literacy in Italy prior to 1760 (rural & urban)

The Thirty Years War in Italy, 1613-1659

Popular standards of living in city & country

Inquisition & intellectual life

Homicide in the 16th and 17th centuries

The World of Mountain Peasants

Petitions & the prince in early modern Italy

Annotated editions of urban chronicles

Social mobility in Baroque Italy

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

COURSES OFFERED 2009 - 2010 

HIST 2063 X/Y MODERN ITALY 1550-2000        Syllabus
HIST 3040 X/Y CULTURE AND BEHAVIOUR IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE        Syllabus
HIST 5061

PRELATES, PEASANTS AND PRIMATES:  from Italian history to the behavioural sciences

HIST 4160 ADVANCED SEMINAR IN BAROQUE CULTURE        Syllabus