List of Contributors

**Jerry H. Bentley** was Professor of World History at the University of Hawaii, USA, and founding editor of the *Journal of World History* since 1990. His research interests included the cultural history of early modern Europe and cross-cultural interactions in world history. He is the author of *Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times* (Oxford University Press, 1993) and the editor of *The Oxford Handbook of World History* (Oxford University Press, 2011). He passed away in 2012.

**Constantin Fasolt** is Karl J. Weintraub Professor at the Department of History and the College of the University of Chicago, USA. His research is aimed at developing a new perspective on European history by focusing on peoples relationship to their language. He has published *The Limits of History* (University of Chicago Press, 2004) and *Past Sense: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern European History* (Brill, forthcoming 2014).

**David Gilmartin** is Professor of History at North Carolina State University. He is the author of *Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan* (University of California Press, 1988) and co-editor with Bruce Lawrence of *Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia* (University Press of Florida, 2000). He is currently finishing a book on the politics of water and irrigation in colonial India and researching the history of the law of elections in 20th century India.

**Peter Iver Kaufman** is George Mathews and Virginia Brinkley Modlin Professor at the University of Richmond and Professor Emeritus at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 2013, his latest book, *Religion around Shakespeare* was published by the Pennsylvania State University Press, and Palgrave Macmillan published *Leadership and Elizabethan Culture*, which he edited for the Jepson series. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal *Religions*.

**Kate Lowe** (Ph.D. The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1985) is Professor of Renaissance History and Culture at Queen Mary, University of London. She has written monographs on *Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy: The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini* (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and *Nuns' Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy* (Cambridge University Press 2004). She was involved with the exhibition *Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe* at the Walters Art Museum in 2012-13, and is co-curating an exhibition on Renaissance Lisbon at the Wallace Collection in London in 2014. Her current project is entitled *Africa in Europe, c. 1440- c. 1650: Renaissance Encounters*.

**John M. McManamon**, S.J., is a professor of Italian Renaissance history and medieval nautical archaeology in the History Department of Loyola University Chicago. His latest book, *The Text*  *and Contexts of Ignatius Loyola's "Autobiography"*, was published by Fordham University Press in 2013. At present he is working on a monograph dealing with Renaissance efforts to recover Roman shipwrecks from lago di Nemi near Rome. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina under the direction of Professor John M. Headley.

**John Jeffries Martin,** professor and chair of History at Duke University, studies Renaissance and early modern Europe, with a particular interest in religion, identity, and law. Martin is the author of *Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City* (University of California Press, 1993) and *Myths of Renaissance Individualism* (Palgrave, 2006). In addition, Martin has edited or co-edited four volumes, among them *Venice Reconsidered* (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); and he is co-editor with Richard Newhauser of *Virtues & Vices*, a series for Yale University Press. Before joining the Duke faculty in 2007, Martin was chair of the department of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Martin received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard.

**James M. Weiss** is a scholar of early modern humanism, especially of the emergence of humanist biography. His *Humanist Biography in Renaissance Italy and Reformation Germany* (Ashgate) appeared in 2010. He is also an expert on the history of papal elections and the college of cardinals. His more recent research examines techniques of vocational discernment. He holds his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and has taught at Harvard, Notre Dame, and Boston College, where he directs the Capstone Senior Seminar Program and is Associate Professor of Church History in the Department of Theology.

**Ronald G. Witt** is William B. Hamilton Professor at Duke University, emeritus. He specializes in medieval and early renaissance Italy. His most recent books are *In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni* (Brill, 2000); and *The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of the Renaissance in Medieval Italy* (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Reprinted from *Religions*. Cite as: Kaufman, P.I. "From the Renaissance to the Modern World—Introduction." *Religions* 3 (2012): 1138–1139.

#### *Editorial*
