Julia L. Hairston’s work focuses on the intersection of literature and history in the Italian Renaissance, primarily as regards gender. She has published articles on Machiavelli, Ariosto, and Alberti and co-edited three collections of essays, one devoted to gender issues in Italian culture (Peter Lang, 1996), another to the body in early modern Italy (Johns Hopkins, 2010), and a third to gender in early modern Rome (I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 2014).
Hairston has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ; and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. She was elected to the Arcadian Academy in 2016. Her work on Tullia d’Aragonaincludes numerous essays and bilingual editions of her poems and letters (CRRS & Iter, 2014) and her epic poem, co-edited with John C. McLucas, The Wretch, Otherwise Known as Guerrino (Iter, 2025).
Her current projects include an intellectual biography of Tullia with the working title The Thorny Laurel: Tullia d’Aragona, Poet and Philosopher and an edited collection, with Milena Sabato, on women as readers in early modern Italy, the latter forthcoming from University of Delaware Press in 2027. Together with Paolo Alei, she organizes the triennial Early Modern Rome conferences.
When possible, she escapes from Rome and heads to the mountains of Abruzzo.
Selected Publications
- Tullia d’Aragona, The Wretch, Otherwise Known as Guerrino: A Bilingual Edition, edited with an introduction by Julia L. Hairston, annotated by Julia L. Hairston and John C. McLucas, translated by John C. McLucas. (New York: Iter Press), 2025.
- “Gender in Early Modern Rome,” edited by Julia L. Hairston, cluster of essays in I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, vol. 17.1 (2014).
- The Body in Early Modern Italy, eds. Julia L. Hairston and Walter Stephens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
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