Senior Thesis pt 1: Proposal
Plurk saw me tableflip about this last week, but I just wrote up a more in-depth (if still very informal) proposal and I'm just going to stick this here and explain again since lolwhat. I had been planning to do my senior thesis on the development of ethnicity in the Italian Renaissance--that was what I researched for much of last year, that was what I presented on in April, and so on. I had made a point to namedrop the Borgias where I could in part because I thought it was relevant and in part just for my own entertainment. I used to get a kick out of slipping in quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in my essays for history classes in high school in much the same way. When I went to talk to my advisor, however, she recommended that I focus my paper on the experiences of that family in particular.As we continued to talk, she asked how I had gotten interested in them and got into a conversation about the various different pieces of historical fiction on them, at which point she told me it would be best if I could manage to tie in a discussion of how and why Souryo Fuyumi looks at ethnicity in Cesare.
And that is how I was given the assignment of writing forty pages on a family that I was only planning on mentioning in the finished work as an aside and a manga that I would have been mortified to mention at all.
Since coming to Oregon from Hawaii, I have developed an interest in ethnic studies and ethnic identity. I admit that I was never particularly interested in this subject before simply because I never felt that it related to me. I am a member of one of the various ethnic majorities in Hawaii and Hawaii’s relationship to ethnic identity is in many ways much more casual-and at the same time still hotly political-than in many other places. My interest in ethnic studies grew during my years in Oregon and, due in part to my early decision to pursue a major in history, became intertwined with my interest in the Italian Renaissance.
For my senior project, I would like to focus on the question of ethnicity during the Italian Renaissance. I will look at how it compared to modern ethnic identity as well as the growing sense of national consciousness in Europe at the time. Tightening my focus, I will be looking primarily at the years around the turn of the fifteenth century, in part because of the international events taking place at that time, including in 1492 both the end of the Reconquista and Columbus’ landing in America. I feel that ethnic identity should be looked at with an eye to these larger political events, and to that end I will be narrowing my paper down further by using the Borgia family in Rome as a convenient case study of various issues and themes.
My interest in this family grew out of a chance encounter with a work of fiction about Cesare Borgia in high school, and led to my interest in ethnicity in this period because of the way it is often overlooked or glossed over as a motivating factor in their behavior, apart from the assertion that Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) had an expected tendency to side with Naples and Spain because of his own Spanish background. The family was not Castilian, however, but Catalan, itself known today as a distinct ethnic group within the Iberian Peninsula. While I feel that it is rather inappropriate to claim that the experiences of this one unusual family reflect the realities of ethnic identity during this period, I also think that it is worthwhile to look at them more closely because of their position as newcomers to the Italian political arena made them a lighting rod for public opinion and because of the difficulty in general of getting good primary sources on this topic for this time. Many studies on ethnic identity in history treat it as a side subject, much as how women were often relegated to colored boxes at the ends of chapters in history textbooks. There is a need to better integrate ethnic studies into the field of history and I feel that one relatively simple way to do that is to begin by proving the importance of ethnic identity to an already well-known group within mainstream history. I have already explained why I think the Borgia family is an ideal one for this task.
I would like to stretch my work on this family further, by acknowledging their mythic and infamous nature and exploring how their depiction in popular culture has changed over time. In the last five hundred years, many popes and their families have been largely forgotten, but not so for the Borgias and their legacy of poison and murder. The cementing of their name into Western (and otherwise, as I will address below) consciousness has much to do, I will argue, with their ethnic identity and what it meant at the time Alexander VI rose to and fell from power. Their role in literature and mythos has changed throughout the centuries, moving from the reputation of sin and tyranny of the years shortly after their fall from power, to portrayals as tragic villains who are unable to overcome their legacy of sin, as in Arthur Symon’s Cesare Borgia: A Tragedy in One Act (1920) or Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia (1839). In more recent years, a new image has arisen of the family as both deeply flawed and intensely human, as in Showtime’s 2011 series The Borgias and Ubisoft games Assassin’s Creed II (2009) and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (2010). The work I have found that actively turns the idea of ethnic identity into a theme is Souryo Fuyumi’s manga Cesare (2005-ongoing). As Hayden White writes, “[h]istorical situations are not inherently tragic, comic, or romantic. […] All the historian needs to do to transform a tragic into a comic situation is to shift his point of view or change the scope of his perceptions.” These different pieces of fiction tell us a lot about the time in which they were crafted even as they add to the growing pool of lore surrounding the family. I would like to delve into Souryo’s Cesare because of my interest in ethnic identity and because, just as I think the Borgia family is an interesting case study on ethnicity in the Italian Renaissance, I think Cesare is a good example of how and why they are still compel thought and discussion so many years later.
And that is how I was given the assignment of writing forty pages on a family that I was only planning on mentioning in the finished work as an aside and a manga that I would have been mortified to mention at all.
Since coming to Oregon from Hawaii, I have developed an interest in ethnic studies and ethnic identity. I admit that I was never particularly interested in this subject before simply because I never felt that it related to me. I am a member of one of the various ethnic majorities in Hawaii and Hawaii’s relationship to ethnic identity is in many ways much more casual-and at the same time still hotly political-than in many other places. My interest in ethnic studies grew during my years in Oregon and, due in part to my early decision to pursue a major in history, became intertwined with my interest in the Italian Renaissance.
For my senior project, I would like to focus on the question of ethnicity during the Italian Renaissance. I will look at how it compared to modern ethnic identity as well as the growing sense of national consciousness in Europe at the time. Tightening my focus, I will be looking primarily at the years around the turn of the fifteenth century, in part because of the international events taking place at that time, including in 1492 both the end of the Reconquista and Columbus’ landing in America. I feel that ethnic identity should be looked at with an eye to these larger political events, and to that end I will be narrowing my paper down further by using the Borgia family in Rome as a convenient case study of various issues and themes.
My interest in this family grew out of a chance encounter with a work of fiction about Cesare Borgia in high school, and led to my interest in ethnicity in this period because of the way it is often overlooked or glossed over as a motivating factor in their behavior, apart from the assertion that Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) had an expected tendency to side with Naples and Spain because of his own Spanish background. The family was not Castilian, however, but Catalan, itself known today as a distinct ethnic group within the Iberian Peninsula. While I feel that it is rather inappropriate to claim that the experiences of this one unusual family reflect the realities of ethnic identity during this period, I also think that it is worthwhile to look at them more closely because of their position as newcomers to the Italian political arena made them a lighting rod for public opinion and because of the difficulty in general of getting good primary sources on this topic for this time. Many studies on ethnic identity in history treat it as a side subject, much as how women were often relegated to colored boxes at the ends of chapters in history textbooks. There is a need to better integrate ethnic studies into the field of history and I feel that one relatively simple way to do that is to begin by proving the importance of ethnic identity to an already well-known group within mainstream history. I have already explained why I think the Borgia family is an ideal one for this task.
I would like to stretch my work on this family further, by acknowledging their mythic and infamous nature and exploring how their depiction in popular culture has changed over time. In the last five hundred years, many popes and their families have been largely forgotten, but not so for the Borgias and their legacy of poison and murder. The cementing of their name into Western (and otherwise, as I will address below) consciousness has much to do, I will argue, with their ethnic identity and what it meant at the time Alexander VI rose to and fell from power. Their role in literature and mythos has changed throughout the centuries, moving from the reputation of sin and tyranny of the years shortly after their fall from power, to portrayals as tragic villains who are unable to overcome their legacy of sin, as in Arthur Symon’s Cesare Borgia: A Tragedy in One Act (1920) or Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Lucrezia Borgia (1839). In more recent years, a new image has arisen of the family as both deeply flawed and intensely human, as in Showtime’s 2011 series The Borgias and Ubisoft games Assassin’s Creed II (2009) and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (2010). The work I have found that actively turns the idea of ethnic identity into a theme is Souryo Fuyumi’s manga Cesare (2005-ongoing). As Hayden White writes, “[h]istorical situations are not inherently tragic, comic, or romantic. […] All the historian needs to do to transform a tragic into a comic situation is to shift his point of view or change the scope of his perceptions.” These different pieces of fiction tell us a lot about the time in which they were crafted even as they add to the growing pool of lore surrounding the family. I would like to delve into Souryo’s Cesare because of my interest in ethnic identity and because, just as I think the Borgia family is an interesting case study on ethnicity in the Italian Renaissance, I think Cesare is a good example of how and why they are still compel thought and discussion so many years later.