Molly M. Martin

Molly M. Martin is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Clinical Associate Professor in Liberal Studies. She holds an A.B. in Italian and French from Wheaton College, an M.A. in Italian from Middlebury College, and an M.A. in Romance Languages (French and Italian) from Columbia University. She also earned her M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Italian Literature from Columbia University, as well as a Certificate for Research on Gender and Women’s Studies. Her scholarship centers on the political poetry of Italian women writers throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her book, Veronica Gambara: Complete Poems, A Bilingual Edition (2014), presents the first modern translation of the poet’s oeuvre with a critical introduction that delineates how the dowager countess drew upon her poetry as an instrument of rule to emerge as the first woman poet-ruler of the Italian tradition. Her current scholarship focuses on the political dimensions in the portrayal of Venetian history in Lucrezia Marinella’s epic poem L’Enrico; ovverro, Bisanzio acquistato (1635). She regularly teaches a Arts and Cultures across Antiquity seminar entitled “Ancient Foundations for the Modern World,” which explores the process whereby literary works from the ancient past live on by way of modern adaptation and critical reinterpretation in the modern cultural era, and she enjoys mentoring Senior Thesis projects in the Art, Text, and Media concentration. She speaks frequently on the value, best practices, and future of the Global Liberal Arts.