June 11, 2001 Harvard's Villa I Tatti awards $40,000 fellowship to UCSC associate professor By John Newman Deanna Shemek, associate professor of Italian and comparative literature, has been awarded a $40,000 fellowship from Villa I Tatti for her critical study examining the correspondence of Isabella d'Este (1474-1539), Marchioness of Mantua. Villa I Tatti is a postdoctoral institute in Florence, Italy, dedicated to scholarship and the exchange of ideas in a variety of disciplines within Italian Renaissance studies, including history, literature, music, philosophy, science, and theology, as well as the fine arts. It is operated and owned by Harvard University. Isabella d'Este was one of the most notable women of the Renaissance. Although her letters have been a valuable resource for many different kinds of Renaissance scholars, Shemek is the first to study them as literary and rhetorical objects, in and of themselves. d'Este's correspondence is made up of about 12,000 letters housed in the Archivo di Stato di Mantova, in Italy. Shemek will spend the summer there pursuing her research. Return to Front Page