Professor Fabrizio Conti to Author Textbook with Routledge

History Professor Fabrizio Conti was recently asked to write a student textbook by the British publisher Routledge, and his book idea was accepted by the editorial board after the peer review process.

Fabrizio Conti

The volume, titled Magic and Witchcraft in Europe from Antiquity to the Renaissance, is aimed at North American and other English-speaking history and humanities college students, as well as at a wider audience interested in the topics. This will be the first textbook covering topics from antiquity to the Renaissance, combining a comprehensive historical and conceptual treatment with a selection of essential primary sources in English translation to complement the theoretical part.

Professor Conti says the inspiration for this volume arises directly from his classroom experience at JCU, where for the past few years he has been teaching two popular intermediate/advanced undergraduate courses on magic and witchcraft. One course covers antiquity and late antiquity, whereas the other focuses on the medieval and Renaissance periods. Teaching and learning the history of magic and witchcraft traditions and their persecution is highly complex because of their nonlinear chronological, geographical, and thematic developments. Professor Conti’s textbook aims to students to develop proper historical, cultural, and conceptual context for the study of a multifaceted topic such as the history of magic.

Fabrizio Conti (Ph.D., Central European University, 2011) is a lecturer in History at John Cabot University and an Arts and Humanities Advisor at the American Academy in Rome. His teaching and research interests span the antique/late antique, medieval, and Renaissance periods, with an interdisciplinary approach to cultural and religious developments and a special focus on the history of magic and witchcraft. His publications include the monograph Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (Brepols, 2015), and the edited volumes: Humanisms and Beyond: Past, Present, and Future of the Humanities within Liberal Arts Education edited with Stefan Lorenz Sorgner (Trivent, 2023), with a Foreword by Franco Pavoncello; “Nemo Non Metuit”: Magic in the Roman World edited with Elizabeth Ann Pollard (Trivent, 2022), and Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions (Trivent, 2020), with a Foreword by Teofilo F. Ruiz.