Deanna Shemek Professor Italian and Comparative Literature Provost, Cowell College 116 Cowell College University of California, Santa Cruz shemek@ucsc.edu (831) 459-5031; message (831) 459-2609

WORKS-IN-PROGRESS:

Writing Relations: American Scholars in Italian Archives. Edited by Deanna Shemek and Michael Wyatt, in honor of Armando Petrucci and Franca Nardelli. Florence: Olschki (In press).

"Mendacious Missives: Isabella d'Este's Epistolary Theater" in Writing Relations: American Scholars in Italian Archives. Edited by Deanna Shemek and Michael Wyatt, in honor of Armando Petrucci and Franca Nardelli. Florence: Olschki (In press).

"Romance, Epic, and Lyric." in Cambridge Companion Guide to the Italian Renaissance. Edited by Michael Wyatt.

Selected Letters of Isabella d'Este for University of Chicago Press translation series, The Other Voice of Early Modern Europe. General Editors Albert Rabil Jr. and Margaret King.

Book manuscript: 'In Continuous Expectation': Isabella d'Este's Epistolary Dominion

 

PUBLICATIONS:

Books:

Phaethon's Children: The Este Court and its Culture in Early Modern Italy. Edited by Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek. Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS), 2005.

Dame erranti. Italian translation of Ladies Errant. Translated by Olivia Guaraldo. Introduction by Adriana Cavarero. Afterword by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Mantova, Italy: Edizioni Tre Lune, 2003.

Adriana Cavarero, Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of Gender. Translated by Robert De Lucca and Deanna Shemek, "Introduction" (1-11) by Deanna Shemek. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Originally published in Italian as Corpo in figure: Filosofia e politica della corporeità (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1995).

Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998.

 

Essays:

"'Mi mostrano a dito tutti quanti': Disease, Deixis, and Disfiguration in the Lamento di una cortigiana ferrarese."  Italiana 2005.

"In Continuous Expectation: Isabella d'Este's Epistolary Desire" in Phaethon's Children: The Este Court and its Culture in Early Modern Italy, eds. Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek. Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Text and Studies, 2005.

"The Collector's Cabinet: Lodovico Domenichi's Gallery of Women" in Strong Voices, Weak Histories. Edited by Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

"<<Ci Ci>> and <<Pa Pa>>: Script, Mimicry, and Mediation in Isabella d'Este's Letters." Rinascimento: Rivista dell'Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Seconda serie, Vol. 43 (2005), 75-91.

"Isabella d'Este and the Properties of Persuasion" in Form and Persuasion in Early Modern Women's Letters Across Europe. Edited by Ann Crabb and Jane Couchman. Brookfield VT: Ashgate, 2005. 108-35.

"Aretino's Marescalco: Marriage Woes and the Duke of Mantua."  Art and Culture in Renaissance Mantua. Renaissance Studies  16/3 (2002) 366-80.

"Este, Isabella d.'" Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. New York: Scribners, 1999. 295-97.

"Books at Banquet: Commodities, Canon, and Culture in Giulio Cesare Croce's Convito universale." Annali d'Italianistica 16 (1998): 85-101.

"Dall'insulto verbale all'oltraggio fisico: I racconti di Isabella de Luna del Bandello." In La rappresentazione dell'altro nei testi del Rinascimento, ed. Sergio Zatti, 77-95. Lucca, Italy: Pacini Fazzi, 1998.

"Circular Definitions: Configuring Gender in Italian Renaissance Festival." Renaissance Quarterly 48.1 (1995): 1-40.

"Of Women, Knights, Arms, and Love: The Orlando Furioso and Ariosto's Querelle des Femmes." MLN 104.1 (1989): 68-97.

"That Elusive Object of Desire: Angelica in the Orlando Furioso." Annali d'Italianistica 7 (1989): 116-141.

SELECTED COURSES:

Quest Narratives
Boccaccio
N. Machiavelli
Italian Renaissance Survey
Early Modern Italian Comedy
Renaissance Versions of Gender
Frame Tale Fictions

Radical Italy: Francis of Assisi to Dario Fo

Graduate Courses taught on Ariosto, Italian Epic and Romance, Femininity in the Italian Renaissance, Early Modern Italian Women Writers, Antonio Gramsci, Renaissance Epistolarity

INTERESTS:

I am interested in the development of narrative forms, from the epic and the early tale or novella through the romance tradition and into contemporary fiction. I also study certain popular literary forms such as the letter, the pamphlet, and the ballad in Italian. Writings of Italy's sixteenth century are my particular interest, including all narrative and dramatic forms, the dialogue, and the theoretical tract. Literature written by women and other marginal figures to Renaissance high culture is a frequent focus of my research. Though my orientation is strongly literary, my research and teaching lies at a crossroads between literary, historical, art historical, and political materials. My theoretical interests include ancient and modern theories of literary and visual representation; psychoanalytical, historicist, and historical materialist methodologies; theories of sexuality and desire; and feminism.

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LINKS:

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