(May 21, 2023) – The story is probably familiar to those who’ve taken an American or world history course. After the fall of Rome, a dark age descended on Europe until the Italian Renaissance reignited European minds. Those same Italians passed their inspiration to English protestants, who in turn brought ideas to the original 13 colonies in what would become the United States.
East Tennessee State University’s Dr. Brian Maxson plans to complicate that narrative in his upcoming book, “The United States Finds the Italian Renaissance.”
He’s receiving impressive support to accomplish the project.
The American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 and the oldest learned society in the U.S., has awarded Maxson a Franklin Research Grant. The prestigious award will fund a research trip, planned for May and June in 2024, to Boston and New York City to work with unpublished sources.
“The power of this story – that American history was deeply rooted in the Italian Renaissance – continues to impact both secondary and university curricula in the twenty-first century United States. Most people, including specialists, simply assume there is a relationship between the Italian Renaissance and the United States. However, that connection only dates to around the turn of the twentieth century,” said Maxson, a professor in the Department of History. “The story of the West, for the Italian Renaissance, drew heavily upon the work of Jacob Burckhardt, which became popular towards the end of the 1800s and then, some decades later, Hans Baron, who wrote in the 1950s and 1960s.”
The Franklin grant adds to other professional successes for Maxson, who will travel this summer to Italy to conduct original research with unpublished sources in Bologna, as well as deliver an invited lecture at the International Studies Institute housed in the historic Palazzo Rucellai in Florence. That work will support multiple projected international publications and presentations in the years to come.
From discoveries entirely new to science to books about little-known maladies, Maxson is one of the dozens of ETSU faculty generating cutting-edge scholarship.