Medieval & Renaissance Studies
and Urban History
New College of Florida
Carrie E. Beneš,
PhD, FAAR
Medieval & Renaissance History
and Urban Studies
New College of Florida
I'm a scholar of premodern Italy and the Mediterranean, focusing on the classical tradition, the cultural history of landscape and identity, and mapping/geospatial analysis. I enjoy collaborative work and student advising, when it allows me to incorporate students into my research program.
I have 20 years of experience in curriculum and program development, from undergraduate courses and faculty development to cross-campus curricular initiatives, including accreditation, assessment, and microcredentialing.
I've taught a wide variety of courses in history and premodern studies from the ancient world to the Thirty Year's War, in a variety of modes from individual and small-group tutorials and large lecture classes to hands-on practicums and experiential site visits.
I'm a pragmatic problem solver skilled at gathering stakeholder input and creating plans that achieve collective buy-in. I'm known for attention to detail even while maintaining a broad perspective, and I enjoy fostering growth and helping others navigate challenges.
Major Publications
Out now! (1 October 2025)
Cosmology, Science, and Geography in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean
Contrary to modern assumptions, people in the Middle Ages always knew that the Earth was round, as we see in La Sfera (“The Globe”) by Gregorio (Goro) Dati (1362–1436). This scientific treatise in poetic form introduced early fifteenth-century readers to the cosmos, the natural world, and the geography of the Mediterranean, summarizing Europeans’ sense of the world and its geography in the period before Columbus, particularly in the last few decades when middle-class Italian merchants like Dati dominated the global economy. This edition of Dati’s Sfera was produced collaboratively by a team of scholars from a range of academic disciplines and specialties, among them history, the history of science, literary history, textual criticism, and paleography. This volume presents the text of Dati’s La Sfera, a parallel English translation, and an array of images from the manuscript tradition to demonstrate how its diagrams and maps enhance the reader’s understanding of the text. Each image appears alongside the text that it would normally accompany in the manuscripts. Our edition is therefore the opposite of a facsimile edition, in that it offers readers a sense of the diversity of the corpus by reproducing images from different codices. By using this method, we hope to give readers a clear understanding of Dati’s holistic approach to fifteenth-century poetry, science, art, commerce, and cartography.
