Ramie Targoff is the Jehuda Reinharz Professor of the Humanities, a professor of English and co-chair of Italian Studies at Brandeis University. She teaches, studies and is the author of many books on Renaissance literature and women’s writing, including, most recently, “Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance” and “Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna.” Targoff has been a visiting professor at Oxford University’s Merton College; Villa I Tatti, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy; and the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. She’s received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, and she was the Renaissance scholar in residence at the American Academy in Rome.
Previously
Rosalind, Viola, Portia and Beatrice are unforgettable roles in Shakespeare’s plays. But there were real women behind these characters — women who spoke out against patriarchy...