Julia L. Hairston Honored for Bringing Italian Epic to English Readers

Julia L. Hairston, Felix Gilbert Member (2016) in the School of Historical Studies, has received the 2026 Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender (SSEMWG). Hairston shares the award with John C. McLucas, Professor Emeritus of Italian at Towson University, for Tullia d’Aragona, The Wretch, Otherwise Known as Guerrino: A Bilingual Edition (Iter Press, 2025). The book is the only English translation of the first epic poem written by an Italian woman, presented in a bilingual, fully annotated edition that sets the original Italian and the English side by side.

Written by the sixteenth-century poet, philosopher, and courtesan Tullia d’Aragona (1501–1556) and published posthumously in 1560, The Wretch follows the adventures of Guerrino, a nobleman captured by pirates as an infant and sold into slavery. The poem paved the way for the epics of other women writers in subsequent decades.

In its citation, SSEMWG praised Hairston’s “meticulously edited Italian text” and McLucas’s “excellent translation,” which together “exemplify scholarly precision.” Across “thirty-six cantos and more than 1,000 pages,” the volume also offers “a rich critical introduction and rigorous annotations throughout” that “illuminate the poem’s literary and historical contexts,” as well as an “exceptionally useful character list” to guide readers through the poem’s sprawling narrative. “Monumental in scope and exacting in execution,” the citation concludes, “this edition represents collaborative scholarship of the highest order.”

Hairston, a scholar of gender in early modern Italy, dedicated part of her Institute Membership in spring 2016 to work on the edition.

Read more about the SSEMWG awards on the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender website.