Elissa B. Weaver

Weaver
Professor Emerita of Italian Literature
e-weaver@uchicago.edu
PhD, University of California-Los Angeles, 1975

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), a study of the life and religious plays of Antonia Tanini Pulci, Saints' Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage (2010), 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 two 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.

Awards, Honors, and Professional Experience

  • Chair, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, 1994-2000; Acting Chair, spring 1991, winter 1993 and 2005
  • Mellon Emeritus Fellowship, 2010-2012
  • 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

Publications

Subject Area: Italian Studies