The Bolognese nun Diodata Malvasia was presumed to have authored only one work, The Arrival and the Miraculous Workings of the Glorious Image of the Virgin (1617). In her recently discovered second manuscript chronicle, A Brief Discourse on What Occurred to the Most Reverend Sisters of the Joined Convents of San Mattia and San Luca (1575), her writing demonstrates active resistance to Tridentine convent reform. Together, Malvasia’s works read as the bookends to a lifelong crusade on behalf of her convent.

Danielle Callegari received her Ph.D. from New York University. She has published on Dante, early modern nuns, and food and politics in Italy. Her current research focuses on the social and political history of food and eating in medieval and early modern literature. Shannon McHugh completed her Ph.D. at New York University. Her publications include articles on Vittoria Colonna and on literary underworld journeys. Presently she is working on a book that explores constructions of masculinity and femininity in early modern Italian lyric poetry.