Books by Nicholas (Associate Professor of History Terpstra

Based on extensive archival research and individual stories, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance demonstrates how gender and class shaped individual orphanages in each city's network and how politics, charity, and economics intertwined in the development of the early modern state.

Terpstra's meticulous investigation not only uncovers the sad fate of the lost girls of the Casa della Pieta but explores broader themes, including gender relations, public health, church politics, and the challenges girls and adolescent women faced in Renaissance Florence.