Joanne M. Ferraro is Professor and Chair of History at San Diego State University. She is the author of Family and Public Life in Brescia, 1580 1650: The Foundations of Power in the Venetian State (Cambridge University Press, 1993); Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (2001), which was awarded best book from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History; and Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the Republic of Venice, 1557 1789 (2008).