Elissa B. Weaver
Professor Emerita of Italian Literature
e-weaver@uchicago.edu
Professor Weaver is a scholar of early modern Italian literature and language. She is the author of articles on the Italian epic-chivalric tradition (on Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto), on Boccaccio's Decameron, and on the writing of women, especially convent women. She has published a monograph on a women's literary tradition, Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women (2002), and critical editions of Beatrice del Sera's spiritual comedy, Amor di virtú (1990), and of the seventeenth-century debate between Francesco Buoninsegni and Arcangela Tarabotti, Satira Antisatira (1998); she has edited several collections of essays The Decameron First Day in Perspective (2004) and Arcangela Tarabotti, a Literary Nun in Baroque Venice (2006);and co-edited with Joshua Scodel a festschrift, Selva Filologica: Essays in Honor of Paolo Cherchi (2003). Professor Weaver was a curator and co-edited (with Elizabeth Rodini) the catalogue of the Smart Museum exhibit, A Well-Fashioned Image: Clothing and Costume in European Art, 1500-1850 (2002), and is co-editor with Catherine Mardikes of the Italian Women Writers database. She is currently preparing a biography of Antonia Tanini Pulci and an edition of her plays.
Education
- PhD, Italian Language & Literature, UCLA, 1975
- MA, Italian Language & Literature, UCLA, 1965
- BS, with Honors, Mathematics, University of Illinois, 1961
Awards, Honors, and Professional Experience
- Chair, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, 1994-2000; Acting Chair, spring 1991, winter 1993 and 2005
- Newberry Library/NEH Fellowship, 1993-1994
- Harvard Villa I Tatti Fellowship/NEH, 1988-1989
- Burlington Northern Faculty Achievement Award for Graduate Teaching, University of Chicago, 1988
- AAUW Faculty Fellowship, 1983-1984
- Fulbright Summer Fellowship, University of Rome 1971
- Fulbright Teaching-Study Fellowship, Univ. of Florence 1965-1966
- Phi Beta Kappa
Selected Courses Taught
- Letteratura femminile in Italia dal Trecento al Seicento
- Early Modern Women Writers, Europe and New Spain
- Rappresentazioni di alterità nel Rinascimento italiano
- Introduction to the Italian Language Through Dante
- Il romanzo epico-cavalleresco (alternately on the poems of Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto)
- Petrarchismo
- Boccaccio e la novellistica
- Teatro del Rinascimento