A book co-edited by Dr. Anne Larsen of the Hope College French faculty is receiving two awards later this month.
The book, the "Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England," is being honored by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women as the best collaborative project published in 2007 and is receiving the 2008 "Roland Bainton Prize for Reference Works" from the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. The awards will be presented during the two organizations' annual meetings, which are being held jointly on Thursday-Sunday, Oct. 23-26, in St. Louis, Mo.
It is the second consecutive year that Larsen has received recognition for a book from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. In the fall of 2007, she received the society's "Translation or Teaching Edition Award" for her book "From Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les Dames des Roches."
The "Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England" includes biographies and essays from some 103 contributors concerning the contributions of well-known and lesser-known Renaissance women from the three nations, and was published in April 2007 by ABC-CLIO of Santa Barbara, Calif.; Denver, Colo.; and Oxford, England. Larsen co-edited the volume with Diana Robin, who is a scholar in residence in Classical and Italian literature at Chicago's Newberry Library, and Professor Carole Levin, who is the Willa Cather Professor of History at the University of Nebraska.
The volume is the first comprehensive reference devoted exclusively to the contributions of women to the defining cultural movements in Europe in the period between 1350 and 1700. In addition to contributing two entries, Larsen edited some 50 of the volume's biographies and essays.
The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women includes scholars and teachers from all disciplines who study women and their contributions to the cultural, political, economic, or social spheres of the early modern period. It consists of an international network of scholars who meet annually, sponsor sessions at conferences, maintain a listserv and Web site, give awards for outstanding scholarship, and support one another's work in the field.
The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference is an international and interdisciplinary organization founded to promote research in the various aspects of early modern studies and to help disseminate the results of such research. In addition to the annual meeting, the organization's activities include publishing the quarterly "The Sixteenth Century Journal."