Susan Gaylard

Susan Gaylard’s research and teaching focus on rhetorics of power. She completed her undergraduate work in her native South Africa, before studying at Berkeley and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Prof. Gaylard primarily works on the early modern period, in particular the intersection between literature and material culture. Her first book, Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and Public Identity in Renaissance Italy (Fordham University Press, 2013) explores the linking of literary identity to objects (like books, coins, clothes, portraits, monuments, emblems), and the gendering of the literary canon. Her current project explores the gendering of popular historiography through visual-verbal interactions in 16th-century illustrated books. The next book will highlight race-making in Italian fashion from the middle ages to today.

Other teaching and research interests include gender and portraiture; nationalism as expressed in material culture; and the intersection of language with politics. 

Prof. Gaylard has presented work in Italy, Britain, Australia, Canada, Egypt, and the US, on topics ranging from Boccaccio to mafia and state capture in Italy and South Africa. Recent publications focus on Machiavelli’s political philosophy, printed portraits of women, and early modern bodily objects.