The Spanish Embassy in Genoa: A Unique Case

CAS 209, 12-1 pm Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Dr. Michael J. Levin was born and raised in Philadelphia PA.  He graduated from Vassar College in 1990, and received his Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Yale University in 1997.  He first came to the University of Akron in 1999, and received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of History in 2005.  He is the author of Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cornell University Press, 2005), and a contributor to The Dangerous Trade: Spies, Spymasters and the Making of Europe, ed. Daniel Szechi (Dundee University Press, 2010).

Dr. Levin’s research and teaching focus on Renaissance Europe, with a special interest in Spain, Italy, and diplomatic/ political history.  His teaching features an interdisciplinary approach, combining art, literature, philosophy, and religion with the study of history.

Presentation Summary

“My research project focuses on Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, the Spanish resident ambassador in Genoa from 1529 to 1569.  He is a unique case in Renaissance diplomacy, having been at his post for an unprecedented forty years.  But the Spanish embassy in Genoa was also a very different kind of embassy, because of the special relationship between Spain and Genoa at the time.  Ambassadors usually were posted to independent states, but Genoa was already very much in Spain’s geopolitical orbit.  Figueroa’s duties as ambassador were thus very different from Spain’s other ambassadors, and I will discuss these differences in my presentation.”

Anyone is welcome to attend this research presentation; feel free to bring a brown bag lunch!