New College Professor Receives National Endowment for Humanities Grant

August 25, 2023 – Sarasota

New College of Florida History Professor Carrie Beneš — in collaboration with Amanda Madden of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) at George Mason University, Laura Ingallinella of the University of Toronto, and Laura Morreale, an independent scholar — has been awarded a $150,000 grant as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Scholarly Editions and Translations program. 

The grant supports the La Sfera Project, an open-access multimedia edition of Goro Dati’s 15th-century poem La sfera (The Globe). While it will be administered through New College, Beneš is leading a research team collaborating across more than 10 institutions. 

“I am honored to have received this significant grant and look forward to leading an international team as we embark on this project,” said Beneš. “Goro Dati’s work reveals fascinating webs of premodern intercultural trade and exchange, and I am glad we will have the opportunity to share it in a more accessible way through this work.”

“We are thrilled that our own Professor Beneš secured this grant,” said New College Interim President Richard Corcoran. “Her work in this field is second to none, and we are proud of this great accomplishment.”

Beneš is a cultural historian of late medieval Italy whose research focuses on landscape, urban identity and the classical tradition. Her publications include Urban Legends: Civic Identity & the Classical Past in Northern Italy (2011), A Companion to Medieval Genoa (2018), and Jacopo da Varagine’s Chronicle of the City of Genoa (2019). She will spend the 2023-24 year in Rome as Co-PI and Director of Spatial Analysis for the Sfera Project.

As a merchant in 15th-century Florence, Goro Dati led an exciting life: he was disappointed by deals that fell through, robbed by pirates, and cheated by unscrupulous partners. Toward the end of a 50-year career in both commerce and politics, he wrote La sfera to introduce fellow merchant venturers to the cosmos, the natural world, and Mediterranean geography. 

Madden, who will lead the team at RRCHNM, argues that “La sfera overturns common misconceptions what medieval people believed (that the world was flat, for example), and reveals how premodern Europeans understood the world around them before the so-called ‘Age of Exploration.’”