The American University of Rome congratulates Professor Julia L. Hairston, adjunct professor of Art History, on receiving the Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG).
The award recognizes Hairston’s collaboration with John C. McLucas, Professor Emeritus of Italian at Towson University, on Tullia d’Aragona: The Wretch, Otherwise Known as Guerrino: A Bilingual Edition, published by Iter Press in 2025.
The 1,250-page publication makes a landmark work of Italian Renaissance literature accessible to English-language readers in its entirety for the first time. Written by the sixteenth-century poet and philosopher Tullia d’Aragona, The Wretch is recognized as the first epic poem authored by an Italian woman. Its thirty-six cantos follow the adventures of Guerrino, a nobleman captured by pirates in infancy, whose extraordinary journey in search of his origins takes him across continents and into encounters with mythical creatures, unfamiliar cultures, and questions of faith and identity.
At a time when epic poetry was among the most prestigious literary forms and overwhelmingly dominated by male authors, d’Aragona's achievement challenged established expectations of women's place in Renaissance intellectual and cultural life.
Hairston’s contribution includes a meticulously edited Italian text, an extensive critical introduction, and detailed annotations to the text made together with McLucas, who translated the poem into English prose. Together, their work offers new opportunities to study a significant but historically underrepresented voice in European literature.
In announcing the award, the Society’s selection committee praised the publication as:
“Monumental in scope and exacting in execution, this edition represents collaborative scholarship of the highest order.”
The committee particularly commended the edition's scholarly precision, its comprehensive historical and literary commentary, and its contribution to making an important Renaissance text accessible to a wider international readership.
The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender is an international scholarly organization dedicated to advancing research and teaching on women and gender in the early modern world. Its Josephine Roberts Award recognizes outstanding scholarly editions that make significant contributions to the field.
For Hairston, the recognition represents an important milestone in a longstanding commitment to recovering and examining women's contributions to Italian Renaissance literature. Her research explores the intersections of literature, history, and gender, with particular attention to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She previously edited a bilingual collection of d’Aragona’s poems and letters and is currently working on an intellectual biography of the Renaissance writer and philosopher.
At AUR, Hairston brings this expertise to the University's Art History program, contributing to an interdisciplinary approach that connects the study of art, literature, history, and the cultural contexts in which they developed.
The award will be formally announced at the Society’s Attending to Early Modern Women and Gender conference in Washington, D.C., in June 2027, as well as at its annual members' meeting.
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