Flora Cassen

Assistant Professor of History (3291)

469 Hamilton Hall
CB# 3195
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599
fcassen@email.unc.edu

B.A. Free University of Brussels, 1999
M.A. Brandeis University, 2000
Ph.D. New York University, 2008

Research Interests

Professor Cassen's dissertation, a study of discriminatory marks that the Jews were compelled to wear in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, probes the roots and consequences of anti-Judaism, is being prepared for publication as Identity or Control: The Jewish Badge in Renaissance Italy. A second project studies Italian Jews who were spies for the king of Spain, records of which she discovered in Italian archives and further documented in Spanish archives. Philip II professed a deep suspicion of the Jews and ordered them to wear a humiliating yellow hat, yet welcomed their intelligence information; some Jews were eager to provide it. Intriguingly, Italian Jews spied on the Turks, thereby playing a role in the Spanish-Ottoman wars, and providing information on the Ottoman empire, which was commonly seen as the Jews’ ultimate protector and refuge from Catholic intolerance.