The Early Books Lecture Series was established at the University of Arizona by Dr. Albrecht Classen, University Distinguished Professor of German Studies. For 20 years, University of Arizona scholars have invited the community to explore rare books, held by University Libraries Special Collections, that provide primary resource materials for research, and are open for students, faculty, staff, and visitors to access.

The lectures are free, open to the public, and held in the Special Collections Conference Room and online via Zoom.

Registration links coming soon.

Tuesday, April 8

Fabian Alfie, Professor, Italian Studies, College of Humanities

Professor Alfie has been at the University of Arizona since 1997, after teaching for two years at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He teaches courses in Italian language (all levels), literature, culture and folklore and was honored with a College of Humanities Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008. 

Alfie's research focuses on medieval comic literature, including books on Cecco Angiolieri (2001) and Dante (2011). This is a field that is vitally important, but frequently misunderstood. The literature of insult was viewed as a means to reinforce morality by publicizing and chastising people's misbehaviors. Therefore, it was considered an ethical art; it was called the literature of "blaming," which was juxtaposed to the literature of "praise" (for praiseworthy actions and individuals). His most recent book, Dante's Tenzone with Forese Donati: The Reprehension of Vice (University of Toronto Press, 2011), explores Dante's experiences with this type of poetry.

Tuesday, April 15

Faith S. Harden, Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor, College of Humanities

Associate Professor Harden is in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and affiliated faculty in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, the Program in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory, the Division for Late Medieval & Reformation Studies, and the American Literary Translators Association. Her research and teaching center on the literary and intellectual history of early modern transatlantic Spain, particularly the picaresque novel, autobiographical fiction and life writing, and the work of women playwrights and poets.

Harden's first book, Arms and Letters: Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain, explores gendered representations of honor, violence, and literary self-fashioning in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century soldiers' memoirs. She also edited a monographic issue for the journal eHumanista on Military Lives in the Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World. Current projects include an English translation of the picaresque novel Estebanillo González and a monograph on the literary and cultural significance of animal imagery in peninsular and colonial Spanish texts.

Tuesday, April 22

Dr. Albrecht Classen, University Distinguished Professor, German Studies

Presentation: Craftsmen as Masterbuilders in the Middle Ages: The Mendel Housebooks (Nuremberg)