Nathalie Hester

Nathalie Hester profile picture
  • Title: Associate Professor of Italian and French, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow 2019-20
  • Phone: 541-346-4058
  • Office: 222 Friendly Hall
  • Office Hours: Spring Term 2022: on Zoom Mondays 2-3pm or by appt.
  • Departments: European Studies, French, Italian, OCIAS, Romance Languages
  • Affiliated Departments: European Studies

Education

Selected publications

               •  "Transnationalism and the Epic Tradition in Baroque Italian Travel Literature." Transnational Italian Studies. Eds. Charles Burdett and Loredana Polezzi. Liverpool UP, 2020. pp. 107-224.        

               • “Italian Travel Writing.” Cambridge History of Travel Writing. Eds. Nandini Das and Tim Youngs, Cambridge UP, 2019. pp. 206-220.

• “Columbus Conquers the Moors: Baroque Italian Epic from Granada to the New World” in The New World in Early Modern Italy:  Eds. Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey, Cambridge UP, 2017.  pp. 270-287.

• “Bitter Laughter and Colonial novellistica in Galeotto Cei’s Relazione delle Indie.” Culture and Civilization 6 (2014): 243-257.

• “Failed New World Epics in Baroque Italy” in Poesis and Modernity in the Old and New Worlds. Special issue of Hispanic Issues, vol. 39. Eds. Anthony Cascardi and Leah Middlebrook. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. pp. 201-223.

• “Writing the Mediterranean in Italian Baroque Travel Literature: Pietro Della Valle’s Viaggi” in Mediterranean Travels: Writing Self and Other from the Ancient World to Contemporary Society. Eds. Patrick Crowley, Noreen Humble, and Silvia Ross. Oxford: Legenda, 2011. pp. 96-113.

• Literature and Identity in Italian Baroque Travel Writing. Ashgate Press, 2008.

• “Travel and the Art of Telling the Truth: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s Travels to Spain.”Huntington Library Quarterly Vol. 70 (1) 2007: pp. 87-102.

• “Taking after Tarabotti? A 17th-century Sienese Discorso.” in Arcangela Tarabotti, a Literary Nun in Baroque Venice . Ed. Elissa Weaver. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2006. pp.191-200

Research and teaching interests

Renaissance and Baroque literature, travel literature, early modern French and Italian historiography, early modern Italian convent culture, feminist theory, seventeenth-century women’s writing.

M.A. Periods

1 & 2

Courses taught

•ITAL 150: Cultural Legacies of Italy •ITAL 317: Medieval and Renaissance Literature •ITAL 449/549 Renaissance Women’s Writing, Italy and the Americas, Renaissance Theater in the Renaissance, Renaissance Court Culture, RL 607: Travel writing in the Age of Curiositas  •FR 150: Cultural Legacies of France •FR317:Medieval and Renaissance Literature •FR319: Modern French Literature •FR407: Ecrivaines et voyageuses:raconter le voyage au 17ème. •HC421: Power and Performativity in Italian Renaissance Court Culture