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Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner. Come celebrate in the Italian house by learning about a different (and some might say better?!) style of football: calcio storico fiorentino! A mix between soccer, rugby, and the occasional bout of wrestling/boxing, calcio storico was invented in Renaissance Florence and was played for many years before it evolved into the "beautiful game" (calcio--soccer) that we know and love today. The sport was also extremely violent: the rules were minimal and injuries plentiful. We will dive into why such a game came about during the Renaissance, how it was played, what it meant for the city of Florence, why it was revived in recent times, and what it looks like when it is played (really!) in Florence today.    

Victoria Fanti graduated from Yale University in 2013 with a B.A. in Comparative Literature. She is now a doctoral candidate at JHU and she is writing her dissertation, tentatively titled Killer Queens, on homicidal women in Italian Renaissance tragedy. Other research interests include literary representations of madness, explorations of the liminal space between life and the afterlife, depictions of the monstrous and grotesque, and the gothic.

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