31 October 5:30 pm-7:00 pm: The NBM Presents Turning Tides: Young Adult speaker series in the Hall of Great Whales featuring Eli McNeil. Free event.

Abstract for the talk: Medicean Tuscany is well-known and rightly celebrated as the principal seat of the Renaissance, with its ruling family playing no small role in the patronage of the flourishing of the arts that characterise that period. While these newly-invigorated modes of cultural transmission ascended, however, their more traditional counterparts—notably the local universities—were not so successful. The early history of the Tuscan universities is one of unenthusiastic fits and lacklustre starts, so much so that detailed analysis of their development within the crucible of the Renaissance is virtually unknown in English-language scholarship. While the fraught history of the universities of Florence and Pisa was doubtless difficult for the contemporary masters and students of those cities attempting to educate and be educated, the sequence of reformation and combination, when considered in the light of the foundation documents of those institutions, presents a unique opportunity for modern scholars to examine the real-world implementation and power of the latter.