Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Fashion’s Hard Borders
A lecture by Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University)
In early modern Europe, fashion and cartography shared more ground than is commonly believed. They not only served to strengthen nationalistic ideals but also relied on similar construction techniques. This presentation will delve into the political dimensions of their intersections, which, rather than being confined to the past, have exerted a lasting influence on both disciplines up to the twentieth century.
An Early Modern World lecture.
Emanuele Lugli, Stanford University, specializes in the study of medieval and early modern Italian art, architecture, fashion, and cartography. He is particularly interested in measurement practices, having authored three books on the subject: Unità di misura: Breve storia del metro in Italia (Bologna 2014); The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness (Chicago 2019); and Measuring in the Renaissance: An Introduction (Cambridge 2023). He also researches questions of scale and the clouds of knowledge that cross seemingly disparate disciplines. His latest publication, Knots, or the Violence of Desire in Renaissance Florence (Chicago 2023), explores how hair evolved into a repository of moral and erotic ideals during the time of the painter Sandro Botticelli.
Fashion’s Hard Borders
A lecture by Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University)
In early modern Europe, fashion and cartography shared more ground than is commonly believed. They not only served to strengthen nationalistic ideals but also relied on similar construction techniques. This presentation will delve into the political dimensions of their intersections, which, rather than being confined to the past, have exerted a lasting influence on both disciplines up to the twentieth century.
An Early Modern World lecture.
Emanuele Lugli, Stanford University, specializes in the study of medieval and early modern Italian art, architecture, fashion, and cartography. He is particularly interested in measurement practices, having authored three books on the subject: Unità di misura: Breve storia del metro in Italia (Bologna 2014); The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness (Chicago 2019); and Measuring in the Renaissance: An Introduction (Cambridge 2023). He also researches questions of scale and the clouds of knowledge that cross seemingly disparate disciplines. His latest publication, Knots, or the Violence of Desire in Renaissance Florence (Chicago 2023), explores how hair evolved into a repository of moral and erotic ideals during the time of the painter Sandro Botticelli.
