William Caferro is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History & Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University.^[1] His expertise is in medieval and Renaissance European history. His publications synthesize economic, military, social, literary, and historical trends.

In 2023, Caferro was elected as a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.^[2] Caferro was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010) by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.^[3] He has also held fellowships from Villa I Tatti (Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Italian Academy for Advanced Study (Columbia University) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is currently a member of the Deputazione di Storia Patria di Toscana and l'Associazione di Studi Storici Elio Conti in Italy.

He received his bachelor's degree from Haverford College in 1984 and a doctorate from Yale University in 1992.

Published works

Books

• Caferro, William (1998). Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0801857881
• Jacks, Philip and William Caferro (2001). "The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family." Penn State University Press. ISBN 978-0271019246.
• Caferro, William (2006). John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0801883231.
• Caferro, William (2017), Editor. The Routledge History of Renaissance Europe New York and London: Routledge Press. ISBN 978-1138898851
• Caferro, William (2010). Contesting the Renaissance. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1405123709.
• Caferro, William (2018). Petrarch's War: Florence and the Black Death in Context. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1108424011

Selected Articles

• Caferro, William (1994). "City and Countryside in Siena in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century". The Journal of Economic History 54(1): 85-103.
• Caferro, William (1996). "The silk business of Tommaso Spinelli, fifteenth-century Florentine merchant and papal banker". Renaissance Studies 10(4): 417-439.
• Caferro, William (1996). "Italy and the Companies of Adventure in the Fourteenth Century". The Historian 58(4): 794-810.
• Caferro, William (1996). “L'Attività bancaria papale e la Firenze del Rinascimento. Il caso di Tommaso Spinelli,” Società e storia 55: 717-753.
• Caferro, Wiiliam (2008). “Continuity, Long-Term Service and Permanent Forces: A Reassessment of the Florentine Army in the Fourteenth Century,” The Journal of Modern History 80: 303-32.
• Caferro, William (2008). “Warfare and Economy in Renaissance Italy, 1350-1450,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39: 167-209.
• Caferro, William (2008). “Tommaso Spinelli, the Soul of a Banker,” Journal of the Historical Society 8.2: 303-322.
• Caferro, William (2013). “Petrarch’s War: Florentine Wages at the Time of the Black Death” Speculum 88.1: 144-16
• Caferro, William (2013). “Edward Despenser, The Green Knight and the Lance Formation: Englishmen in Florentine Military Service” in The Hundred Years War, part III, edited by L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald Kagay (Leiden: Brill): 85-104.
• Caferro, William (2014). “Dante, Byzantium and the Italian Chronicle Tradition” in Dante and the Greeks, edited by Jan Ziolkowski. Harvard University Press: 227-245.
• Caferro, William (2017). “Dante, Riccobaldo and Empire,” Dante Studies 135: 135-155.
• Caferro, William (2018). “The Visconti War and Boccaccio’s Florentine Public Service in Context, 1351-1353,” Heliotropia 15: 161-182.

Awards

• 2002 Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (Vanderbilt)"People".
• 2008 Medieval Institute, Otto Grundler Book Prize^[4]
• 2010 Guggenheim Fellow
• 2016 Vanderbilt University, Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching^[5]
• 2023 Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America

References