Scholar Lectures

Craig A. Monson is Paul Tietjens Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St Louis, where he taught for three decades. His publications on convent music include Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (1995), Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, & Arson in the Convents of Italy (2010), and Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music & Defiance in 17th-century Italy (2012). More recent writings include Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in 17th-century Italy (2016) and The Black Widows of the Eternal City: The True Story of Rome’s Most Notorious Poisoners (2020). In addition to musicological venues, he has spoken at the Kimball Art Center (Fort Worth), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and on NPR’s Fresh Air and BBC3’s The Early Music Show. His next book, Identity Theft in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Andrea Casali, should appear in 2025.