On June 4, 2020, the governor of Virginia ordered the removal of Richmond’s monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, amidst demonstrations across the country against police brutality and systemic racism. His announcement provided a renewed momentum, among racial justice activists, to demand the elimination of all public symbols of white supremacy. Other cities across the nation soon followed suit, ordering the dismantling of Confederate statues, even as protesters, in many places, took the lead in toppling these monuments.

The chairs and directors of Humanities departments and programs at Washington University in St. Louis have prepared a statement on the value of the humanities in times of crisis. In times of severe challenges, it is crucial that we avail ourselves of the invaluable resources that humanities scholarship and education offer. The full statement has now been posted on our departmental blog.

Please join the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in congratulating Professor Ignacio Infante on the publication of his new book, a groundbreaking translation of Vicente Huidobro’s Temblor del cielo, available now.

Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece, the “Decameron,” is set on the outskirts of Florence in 1348. His protagonists have retreated to the countryside in the wake of the Black Death, which is decimating their city both mortally and socially. The book offers important lessons as we confront the global threat of Coronavirus.

When a plague swept 14th-century Florence, killing more than half the city’s population, wealthy Italians turned to social distancing. One small group’s retreat from a stricken city to a deserted villa became the backdrop for the classic novel “The Decameron.”

That novel is just one of the texts Rebecca Messbarger teaches in her Disease, Madness and Death Italian Style course at Washington University. But it has sudden resonance, she says — and relevance she never anticipated when she began teaching it a year ago.

Sitting down in his office lined with thousands of books and a new Keurig, Professor Ignacio Sánchez Prado, who teaches Mexican cinema, literature and culture at Washington University, divulged his life’s story, his work over the years which culminated in his appointment to the Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress.

Interview with Faculty Fellow Akiko Tsuchiya

Please join us in congratulating Professor of French Harriet Stone on the publication of her new book, Crowning Glories: Netherlandish Realism and the French Imagination during the Reign of Louis XIV.

Swashbuckling tales of valiant gauchos roaming Argentina and Uruguay were nineteenth-century bestsellers. But when these stories jumped from the page to the circus stage and beyond, their cultural, economic, and political influence revolutionized popular culture and daily life.

Elzbieta Sklodowska has co-edited with Mabel Cuesta (University of Houston) Lecturas atentas. Una visita desde la ficción y la crítica a veinte narradoras cubanas contemporáneas, which showcases narrative works of contemporary Cuban women authors, both on the island and in the diaspora, accompanied by in-depth critical readings of these texts.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor of Italian Rebecca Messbarger on the upcoming film based on her book, The Lady Anatomist, which will premiere in Germany on November 3, 2019. The Lady Anatomist details the life of Anna Morandi, one of the most acclaimed anatomical sculptors of the Enlightenment.