Monique O’Connell is interested in Renaissance Italian history, particularly the political and social history of Venice. Her first book, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) placed Venice’s overseas holdings into the larger debate on early modern empires and state formation, offering a new reading of how Venice successfully administered a wide swath of diverse territory for hundreds of years. She is currently the project editor of Rulers of Venice (rulersofvenice.org), an electronic version of Venice’s medieval election registers, and she is completing a synthetic history of the medieval and early modern Mediterranean, co-authored with Eric Dursteler. She is also in the earlyMonique O’Connell is interested in Renaissance Italian history, particularly the political and social history of Venice. Her first book, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) placed Venice’s overseas holdings into the larger debate on early modern empires and state formation, offering a new reading of how Venice successfully administered a wide swath of diverse territory for hundreds of years. She is currently the project editor of Rulers of Venice (rulersofvenice.org), an electronic version of Venice’s medieval election registers, and she is completing a synthetic history of the medieval and early modern Mediterranean, co-authored with Eric Dursteler. She is also in the early stages of a project on the methods and means of political communication in Renaissance Italy. She is originally from Connecticut, and comes to Winston Salem by way of Rhode Island, Chicago, Venice, and San Francisco. She took a group of students to Casa Artom in the spring of 2010 and hopes to return soon!...more