Sarti, Raffaella 1963–

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Sarti, Raffaella 1963–

PERSONAL:

Born 1963. Education: Attended the University of Bologna, 1982-88; University of Turin, Ph.D., 1990-94.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Faculty of Political Sciences, Instituto Storico-Politico, Piazza Gherardi, 4, 61029 Urbino PU, Italy. E-mail—raffaella.sarti@uniurb.it.

CAREER:

Writer and scholar. University of Bologna, Italy, professor of social history, 2006-07, professor of women's and gender history, 2007-08; University of Urbino, Italy, researcher and professor of early modern history.

Servant Project, promoter; University of Vienna, Austria, Käthe-Leichter Gastprofessorin, 2006-07; editor for Genesis and editorial board member of Gender and History and Polis.

MEMBER:

Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales et CNRS (Paris, France; membre associée), Societá Italiana delle Storiche (founding member, 1989).

WRITINGS:

Vita di casa: Abitare, mangiare, vestire nell'Europa moderna, Laterza (Roma, Italia), 1999.

Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500-1800, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2002.

Nubili e celibi tra scelta e costrizione: Secoli XVI-XX, Forum (Udine, Italia), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and scholar Raffaella Sarti, born in 1963, graduated from the University of Bologna in 1988, and she received her Ph.D. in European history and societal studies from the University of Turin in 1994. Her research interests lie within the field of early modern and modern European history, including women's and gender history, the history of material culture and the family, and Mediterranean social and cultural history. Sarti has promoted and participated in the Servant Project, a study consisting of over twenty European institutions of higher learning that seek to chart the effects of European domesticity and its relationship with identity. She has also taught social history and women's and gender history at the University of Bologna, and worked as a researcher and a professor of early modern history at the University of Urbino in Italy. In addition to her professional academic posts, Sarti has served as an editor for Genesis and as an editorial board member for both Gender and History and Polis. Sarti's Italian publications include Vita di casa: Abitare, mangiare, vestire nell'Europa moderna, in 1999, and Nubili e celibi tra scelta e costrizione: Secoli XVI-XX, in 2006.

Sarti's Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture, 1500-1800, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, is her first English-language book. The text identifies several elements that constitute the domestic environment and seeks to parallel the function of mate- rial culture and the role of identity, with particular regard to the female perspective, utilizing cultural and socioeconomic categories such as class, gender, and regional diaspora. Anton Schuurman's review for the Institute of Historical Research Web site described the text as being "well-structured" in its approach and use of categories such as "reproduction, consumption, and production." Schuurman stated: "The originality of the book exists in the combination of historical demography (specifically family history), history of material culture, and women's history," and Sarti "not only studies material objects from their economic point of view but also in their symbolic and cultural contexts." Moreover, Schuurman commented on Sarti's examination of marriage and the materialism surrounding it, including the use of the dowry and the acquisition of goods and services for the occasion, and added: "An important point reiterated in Sarti's book is that the position of women changed across time, due to the development of a growing distinction between public and private spheres. The private sphere becomes more and more the domain of women and is particularly identified with the home."

According to H-Net Web site reviewer Carole Collier Frick, Europe at Home includes "clarifications on various topics as diverse as clothing, economics, and the Jews of Europe. The author also provides a helpful summary of conclusions at the end of each chapter. An interesting and engaging center folio includes some eighty-six illustrations (engravings, paintings, drawings, photos of objects and interiors), twelve of which are in color. Subjects range from depictions of servant and master interaction and birth scenes, to kitchens, bedrooms, floor plans, and women delousing themselves in the privacy of their rooms." It is with this diverse and holistic media that Sarti attempts to deliver a broad picture of the European domestic landscape. And, although Frick commented that, due to the breadth of the subject matter, "any larger meaning is difficult to digest," she also noted that the text's "lengthy bibliography on studies of the family, dowry, household, and material culture in Italian, French, and English sources should prove useful to anyone interested in this area of inquiry."

Sarti, by incorporating so many various personal relationships in an array of settings, exposes the intimacies of the interior space. From power dynamics to familial organization, the text encompasses a spectrum of human domestic interactions and the objects that facilitate them. History Today contributor Stephen Wilson observed that the text answers questions such as: "How was the family formed in the past? Who belonged to it? How strong were family ties and what was it like not to have them? Did houses fit families or vice versa? What and how did people eat? What did they wear? And how did their everyday environment change over time?" In response to these inquiries, Sarti employs several academic disciplines including art and economic history "presented in a dizzying kaleidoscope of scraps and snippets," according to Wilson. However, Europe at Home not only explains, in detail, how living conditions and household expenditures have progressed over time but also how the motivations and viewpoints of familial entities have evolved. In an article for the Journal of Social History, John E. Crowley concluded: "Unlike most surveys, which homogenize the monographic research on which they draw, Sarti's approach retains the specificity of others' findings while making carefully qualified generalizations. This approach makes the book ideal as a text for classes: students can refer to the precise substrate of research on which a particular part of the general account depends. They will gain a sense of early modern European social history as an investigation in process rather than a closed set of findings. And, they will find plenty to pique their curiosity for further investigation."