JTerm in Florence 2026
To Read
by Exurbe (Ada Palmer, Professor of History from University of Chicago)
Vasari, the Palazzo Vecchio and the History of Florence
Black Death, COVID, and Why We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages
Video
Ada Palmer on San Marco and Fra Angelico (Youtube)
The Renaissance Court of Medici Florence—How To Get Ahead (Off The Fence Productions/BBC in Films on Demand, 59 min.)
Stephen Smith explores Renaissance Florence under the reign of Grand Duke Cosimo Medici. Cosimo’s fledgling court prized the finer things in life and some of the greatest painters, sculptors and craftsmen in world history came to serve the Grand Duke. Successful courtiers had to have brains as well as brawn. The canniest of them looked to theorists like Niccolo Machiavelli for underhanded ways to get ahead, whilst enlightened polymaths turned their minds to the heavens, and to ice cream.
The Black Death in Florence (Kanopy)
Observe how Florence, the most advanced community in medieval Europe, dealt with the crippling effects of the plague. Learn about the extraordinary and diverse responses of citizens, and see how city leaders took steps to slow the spread of the disease, to counteract the breakdown of laws and government, and to restore the city.
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Kanopy Streaming Video This link opens in a new windowWe provide access to Kanopy as a valuable resource for teaching, learning, and research. Because Kanopy charges the library based on the number of films viewed, we ask that HU community members limit their Kanopy viewing to films needed for those purposes of teaching, learning, and/or research. Thank you.
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Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowStream documentaries from academic subject collections, performances, features in world cinema and training videos.
eBooks in OneSearch
We have so many eBooks about Florence! Here's how to find them:
- Change "Everything" to "Books"
- Enter your search terms (Florence Italy etc.)
- Use the "Full Text Online" filter to limit the results of your search.
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A History of Florence, 1200-1575
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Publication Date: 2008 -
Fire in the City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence
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Publication Date: 2006 -
Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence
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Publication Date: 2002 -
Murder of a Medici Princess
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Publication Date: 2008 -
Around the Tuscan Table: food, family, and gender in twentieth century Florence
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Publication Date: 2004
Databases - History Journals
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JSTOR (Advanced Search) This link opens in a new windowJSTOR includes articles and eBooks from across all academic disciplines; to limit to sources from only a particular subject area, use this Advanced Search interface.
JSTOR provides full text-articles from a wide range of journals, with great academic coverage of history. TIP: using advanced search, you can limit your search by Discipline: Archaeology, History, etc., or limit your search by article type.
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Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowCompanion to "America & History & Life", this searches for articles, dissertations and more on the history of the world from 1450 onward, EXCEPT FOR the U.S. and Canada. TIP: Advanced search allows limiting by language and historical period.
Articles, dissertations and more on the history of the world from 1450 onward, excluding the U.S. and Canada. TIP: Advanced search allows limiting by language and historical period.
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Dissertations Online This link opens in a new window
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Google ScholarBroad coverage of scholarly material on all subjects. Note the need to evaluate results: it's not all full text, and it's not all scholarly. To link Google Scholar to library resources, click on Settings, then click on Library Links, then search for Hollins and check those boxes.
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Project Muse This link opens in a new windowFull-text academic journals and eBooks in the arts and sciences by Johns Hopkins Univ. Press and other scholarly publishers.
Online Encyclopedias & Dictionaries
Ask the History Librarian
MSIS, Information Science
The University of Texas at Austin
BA, History
Southwestern University