Jane Tylus
Jane Tylus specializes in late medieval and early modern European literature, religion, and culture, with secondary interests in 19th-20th century fiction. Her work has focused on the recovery and interrogation of lost and marginalized voices –historical personages, dialects and “parole pellegrine”, minor genres such as pastoral, secondary characters in plays, poems, and epics. She has also been active in the practice and theory of translation. Her current book project explores the ritual of departure in early modernity, especially how writers and artists sent their works into the world.
She previously taught at NYU in Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, where she was founding faculty director of the Humanities Initiative, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been General Editor for the journal I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance since 2013.
Education:
BA, William and Mary
PhD, Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins
Publication Highlights:
- Writing and Vulnerability in the Late Renaissance (1993, Stanford)
- “Women at the Windows: Commedia dell’arte and Theatrical Practice in Early Modern Italy.” Theatre Journal 49 (1997): 323-42
- Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World, (1999, California), co-edited with Margaret Beissinger and Susanne L. Wofford
- Sacred Narratives: The Poems of Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici (2001, Chicago), Translation Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women
- The Longman Anthology of World Literature: Early Modern Europe (2003, 2nd ed. 2007), with David Damrosch
- Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Literature, and the Signs of Others (2009, Chicago), Howard Marraro Prize for Outstanding Work in Italian Studies, MLA
- The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain (2010, Toronto), co-edited with Gerry Milligan
- Gaspara Stampa: The Complete Poems, co-edited with Troy Tower (2010, Chicago)
- Siena, City of Secrets (2015, Chicago)
- Early Modern Cultures of Translation (2015, Philadelphia), co-edited with Karen Newman
Courses
Ital 340:Dangerous Women: Sirens, Sibyls, Poets and Singers from Sappho through Elena Ferrante
Was Sappho a feminist? This course tries to answer that question by analyzing how women’s voices have been appropriated by the literary and cultural canon of the west–and how in turn women writers and readers have reappropriated those voices. Students read a generous amount of literary (and in some cases, musical) works, along with a variety of contemporary theoretical approaches so as to engage in conversation about authorship, classical reception, and materiality. Following an introduction to Greek and Roman texts key for problematic female figures such as sirens and sibyls, we turn to two later historical moments to explore how women artists have both broken out of and used the western canon, redefining genre, content, and style in literary creation writ large. How did Renaissance women such as Laura Cereta, Gaspara Stampa, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz fashion themselves as authors in light of the classical sources they had at hand? And once we arrive in the 20th and 21st centuries, how do Sibilla Aleramo, Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese, and Elena Ferrante forge a new, feminist writing via classical, queer and/or animal viewpoints?
ITAL 948: Theorizing the Modern Subject
This class introduces graduate students in the Humanities and the Social Sciences to Italian critical theory from the 15th century to the present by focusing on different ways of thinking about the emergence of the modern subject, subjectivity and subjection. We read political thinkers and cultural critics like Machiavelli, Vico, Leopardi, Gramsci, Negri, Federici, Lazzarato, Agamben, Braidotti, and Eco. The theorists we read ask us to think about the multiple ways in which one becomes a modern subject by being hailed by particular ideas of what it means to be human, as well as by the State and by capitalism. Our journey into Italian thought is structured through four units: 1) Beyond the Modern Subject: Theorizing the Post-Human; 2) Subjectivity: Theorizing the Modern State; 3) Subjection: Theorizing Modern Economies; 4) The Modern Subject Before Modernity: Italian Renaissance Thought and the Human. During the course, students also draft, redraft, write, and edit a publishable article-length original piece of research working with one or more sources they have read in the class.
ITAL 999: Preparing for Doctoral Exams
The aim of this seminar is to give third-year students the opportunity to work together on the three projects that will occupy them throughout Year 3: the oral comprehensive exam (for early November), the written exam on the three topics lists (for March–April), and the writing of the prospectus, to be defended in September of Year 4. Weekly meetings are run and coordinated by a faculty member in Italian, generally the graduate adviser. Each week of the first nine weeks is devoted to a specific topic on the comprehensive lists requested by the students themselves. Students are in conversation with each other, with the presiding faculty member, and with an additional guest lecturer who is an expert in the areas under discussion. Following the ninth week, there is a dry run of the oral exam. The remaining four weeks are devoted to discussing the composition of the topics lists and to the writing of the prospectus. Informal meetings may continue through the spring to discuss these issues as well.
Prerequisite: completion of all other graduate course work (15 credits).