Overview

The Designated Emphasis (DE) in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies draws on UC Berkeley’s exceptional faculty strength in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences to foster interdisciplinary research on the Renaissance and Early Modern period and to provide an intellectual community for those working in these areas. It offers comprehensive training in a wide range of departments and disciplines. Students combine seminar work in intellectual and cultural history, material culture, and languages to supplement their traditional doctoral studies. The DE fosters cutting-edge research and close collaboration with faculty.

Undergraduate Program

There is no undergraduate program in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.

Graduate Program

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies: Designated Emphasis (DE)

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Faculty and Instructors

+ Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Faculty

Oliver Arnold, Associate Professor.

David William Bates, Professor. Enlightenment, early Modern European intellectual history, 20th century European and American intellectual history, history and theory of media and technology, history of political thought.
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Deborah Anne Blocker, Professor. Early modern French literature and history.
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+ Wendy L. Brown, Professor. Feminist theory, critical theory, theories of neoliberalism, public higher education, nineteenth and twentieth century political theory.
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Anthony J. Cascardi, Dean of Arts & Humanities. English, comparative literature, literature, Spanish, Portuguese, philosophy, aesthetics, early modern literature, French, Spanish Baroque.
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Thomas Dandelet, Professor. Renaissance Italy and Europe, Spanish Empire, early modern Mediterranean.
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Ivonne Del Valle, Associate Professor. Colonial period in Mexico, internal colonialism in Mexico, Jesuits (Loyola, Acosta, Baegert), Baroque and Enlightenment from a colonial perspective, technology and environment, drainage of Mexico City lakes, Christianity and Pre-Hispanic religions .
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+ Kathleen Donegan, Associate Professor. Colonial America, early America, Native America, early Caribbean.
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David A. Frick, Professor. Slavic languages and literatures.
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+ Timothy Hampton, Professor. Culture, politics, English, comparative literature, French, renaissance and early modern European culture, the romance languages, the ideology of literary genre, the literary construction of nationhood, the rhetoric of historiography.
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Kinch Hoekstra, Associate Professor.
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Elizabeth A. Honig, Associate Professor. Painting, Rome, baroque, Renaissance, Antwerp, digital humanities, Brueghel, Rubens.
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Lester Hu, Assistant Professor. Global history of music during the so-called early modern period—both on the time period itself, typically defined as late 1400s to early 1800s, and on its much-debated 'early modern' label.

Victoria Kahn, Professor. Rhetoric, comparative literature, Renaissance literature, poetics, early modern political theory, the Frankfurt School.
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+ Jeffrey Knapp, Professor. Religion, nationalism, theater, English literature, Shakespeare, English renaissance, Spenser, drama, imperialism, epic poetry, authorship, mass entertainment.
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David Landreth, Associate Professor. English Renaissance literature 1500-1660.
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Henrike Lange, Assistant Professor.

Niklaus Largier, Professor. Religion, literature, German, history of medieval and early modern German literature, theology, mysticism, secularism, senses, sensuality, history of emotions, passions, asceticism, flagellation, sexuality.
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Daniel Lee, Assistant Professor. Political theory, history of political thought, jurisprudence.

David Marno, Assistant Professor.

Michael James Mascuch, Associate Professor. Rhetoric, photography, autobiography, narrative and culture, media and society, documentation, early modern Britain.
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Susan Maslan, Associate Professor. French, early modern French literary, political history, the enlightenment, human rights.
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Mairi Mclaughlin, Associate Professor. French linguistics, Italian linguistics, romance linguistics, translation studies, history of French, History of Italian, History of the Romance Languages, language contact, History of the Press, Speech Reporting.
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Nasser Meerkhan, Assistant Professor. Transcultural, transtemporal and translinguistic texts, Medieval Iberia.

Ignacio Navarrete, Professor. Spanish literature: poetry, poetic theory, narrative and culture, history of the book, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Medieval and Early Modern Spanish literature Modern Spain .
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Todd Olson, Professor.

Nicholas Paige, Professor. Cinema (French New Wave), 17th- and 18th-century French literature and culture, history and theory of the novel, quantitative literary history and digital humanities, aesthetics and image theory, subjectivity and autobiography.
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+ Joanna M. Picciotto, Associate Professor.

Diego Pirillo, Associate Professor. Renaissance Europe, History of Books and Reading, history of political thought, History of Historiography.
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Kristin Primus, Assistant Professor. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, 17th and 18th century philosophy.

Sugata Ray, Assistant Professor. Early modern, visual culture, Hinduism, Islam, architecture, Urban cultures, environmental studies, ecology, aesthetics, globalization, postcolonial studies, colonialism, museums, historiography, art history, India, South Asia.
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+ Ethan H. Shagan, Professor. British history, early modern European history, history of religion.
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Jonathan Sheehan, Professor. Religion, Christianity, Europe, secularism, Secularization.
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Chenxi Tang, Associate Professor. European intellectual history, German literature from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, political and legal thought, cultural theory, early modern European literature, Europe and China.
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James G. Turner, Professor. Gender, sexuality, English, 16th-18th-Century English, Italian and French literature, art and literature, 17th-Century political writing, landscape and the city, Enlightenment materialism, sexuality in Renaissance Italian art and Antiquity.
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Sophie Volpp, Associate Professor. East asian languages and cultures, history of performance, gender theory, the history of sexuality, material culture, material objects in late-imperial literature.
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Michael Wintroub, Associate Professor. Religion, ritual, social change, rhetoric, history of science, early modern cultural history, travel, identity formation, alterity, cross-cultural contact, popular and court culture, state-building, humanism, vernacular consciousness and literature, mater.
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Emily Zazulia, Assistant Professor. Musicology, music theory, history of music theory, history of ideas, Medieval Studies, renaissance and early modern European culture, the renaissance .

Emeritus Faculty

Albert Russell Ascoli, Professor Emeritus. Italy, national identity, literature and history, Dante, authorship and authority, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Petrarch, Boccaccio, epic and romance, Renaissance, early modern, Middle Ages.
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Emilie L. Bergmann, Professor Emeritus. Early modern Spain, colonial Spanish America, Spanish literature, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, visual studies, gender and sexuality studies.
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Davitt Moroney, Professor Emeritus. Music, musicology, music performance, Italian Music.
Research Profile