Italian Studies
Contact: Claude Potts
Scope of Collection
The Library collects materials in all aspects of Italian history and literature, including literary criticism, philosophy, and critical theory. The Library maintains an exceptional collection in all divisions of Italian history and literature, from the medieval and renaissance periods to the present. For the 20th century, the collection tends to focus more heavily on new literature(s), literary and cultural theory, cinema, historiography, Italian colonial presence in Africa, national and regional identity politics, and comparative studies with other Romance traditions.
The Italian Collection primarily serves the Department of Italian Studies, the Institute for European Studies' Italian Studies Program, and the Medieval Studies Program. The Italian Collection also serves a broad range of interdisciplinary faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from distinct departments such as Classics, Comparative Literature, Economics, Gender and Women's Studies, History, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology and academic programs in Film Studies, International Business, Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Poltical Economy of Industrial Societies (PEIS), Religious Studies, and Romance Languages and Literatures.
Collection Strengths
Strong research-level collection with emphasis on the Medieval, Baroque, and Early Modern periods.
Special Collections
Important literary and historical works (often translations of classics) from the Middle Ages, the Baroque, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment including Aldus Manutius 1501 edition of Virgil's Opera and Eusebius of Caesarea's De euangelica proeparatione (1470). See the Fontana and Trevesiani collections in the Bancroft Library.
Primary Languages and Formats
Digital and print for Italian and some Latin.
Related Collections
Mainly Bancroft (for special collections), Art History/Classics, Graduate Theological Union, Media Resources Center, but also CED Visual Resources Center, Anthropology, Education-Psychology, Environmental Design, Ethnic Studies, Music, Pacific Film Archive, and the Robbins Collection (Boalt).
More
For information about research tools, library guides, and related pages, see Italian.
