Temple University

Tracy E. Cooper specializes in Venetian and early modern cultural history and theory, with particular interests in architecture and urbanism, space and circulation and patronage and collecting studies. As a member of the board of directors for Save Venice, Inc. she is actively involved in conservation efforts and directs the research track Women Artists of Venice. She is best known for her award-winning book, Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (Yale University Press]), which has had major interdisciplinary impact and been widely reviewed since publishing. 

She has received fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts; the National Gallery of Art; the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for Venetian Research; the Renaissance Society of America and the Eli Lilly Endowment; as well as numerous university and college-funded grants. She has spoken and published widely in English and Italian on early modern architecture and culture and has participated as a member of the interdisciplinary graduate faculty of Venice International University and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick, both in Venice, Italy and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza, Italy. 

She hopes to inspire her students to take advantage of Temple’s global offerings and emerging technologies, as well as new access to original resources for research. Many of her students have won prestigious grants for their research and success in their chosen fields.
 
PhD, History of Art, Princeton University, 1990
Certificate, Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura (Vicenza, Italy), 1987
MFA, History of Art, Princeton University, 1983
MA, History of Art, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1983 
BA, History of Art/ Studio Art, Honors: Undergraduate Scholars Program, 1977 
 
Awards and Residencies
Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grant (2016)
For research on her book project: The Glass Bedroom: Family Dynamics and Cultural Agency in Early Modern Venice

Senior Scholar Research Grant (2008)
Renaissance Society of America

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow (1997)
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts

Selected Work
Cooper, T. E. (2021). “Intermediality, Image & Text in the Construction and Circulation of Cassinese Identity.”
     In The Network of Cassinese Arts. Milan: Officina Libreria.

Cooper, T. E., & Hall, M. (Eds.). (2013). The Sensuous and the Counter-Reformation Church. New York, NY:
     Cambridge University Press.
 
Cooper, T. E. (2008). Patricians and Citizens. In P. Humfrey (Ed.), Artistic Centers of the Italian 
     Renaissance:Venice and the Veneto (pp.151-197). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Cooper, T. E. (2006). Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic. New Haven,
     CT: Yale University Press.
  
Cooper, T. E. (1996). Mecenatismo or Clientelismo: The Character of Renaissance Patronage. In D.
     Wilkins, & R. Wilkins (Eds.), The Search for a Patron in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
     (pp. 19-32). Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.