Dr Helena Sanson

Director of Studies in Modern and Medieval Languages

Lecturer in Italian

t: (01223) 333204

e: hls37@cam.ac.uk

Main Publications:

Monographs:

Women, Language and Grammar: Italy 1500-1900

(Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2010 forthcoming)

(winner of the 'British Academy Postdoctoral Series Monograph' Competition for 2008)

Donne, precettistica e lingua nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Un contributo alla storia del pensiero linguistico

(Florence: Presso l’Accademia della Crusca, xviii+382 pp, 2007)

Articles, Books etc:

The Romance languages in the Renaissance and after in The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages (A Ledgeway, M Maiden and JC Smith, eds)

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2 vols, 2010 forthcoming)

Orsù, non più signora, [...] tornate a segno’: Women, Language Games and Debates in Cinquecento Italy, Modern Language Review, 105, 103-21 (2010, forthcoming)

L’Instituzione della sposa del cavalier Pietro Belmonte ariminese (1587), modern edition with introduction, notes, glossaries and index of names, Letteratura Italiana Antica, 9, 17-76 (2008)

Women and vernacular grammars in sixteenth-century Italy: the case of Iparca and Rinaldo Corso’s Fondamenti del parlar Toscano (1549), Letteratura Italiana Antica, 6, 391-431 (2005)

Semasiologia e onomasiologia della “lingua materna” nella Questione della Lingua cinquecentesca, Rassegna Europea di Letteratura Italiana, 25, 23-46 (2005)

What is your subject and specific area of study?

I am a Lecturer in post-Medieval Italian studies at the Department of Italian. My interdisciplinary research combines the history of linguistic thought and women’s history in Italy. My forthcoming monograph Women, Language and Grammar: Italy 1500-1900 investigates the role played by women in the Italian linguistic tradition as addressees, readers or authors of grammatical texts from the sixteenth century until the end of the nineteenth. I studied Modern and Medieval Languages in Italy and specialized in Comparative Philology with a thesis on the influences of Old Norse on Old English. I then became interested in the linguistic debates of Renaissance Italy and in gender issues and I combined these subjects in my PhD project at the University of Reading. My doctoral dissertation was published in 2007 with the Accademia della Crusca in Florence, the oldest linguistic academy in Europe, founded in 1582. I have been at the University of Cambridge since 2003, first as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2003-5) and then in my current role as a Lecturer.

LEFT: Bronzino, Portrait of Laura Battiferri Ammannati (c. 1560)

RIGHT: Adriano Cecioni, La zia Erminia (1867-70)

What makes Clare College such a good place to study your subject?

Clare has a fellow or a research associate in almost all languages taught in the MML faculty. Studying here offers you plenty of opportunities to perfect your language skills and study engaging and fascinating topics, while enjoying a lively and very friendly atmosphere. Courses for Italian, for instance, range across different centuries, from the Middle-Ages to the modern day, and across subjects, from literature to history, from art to cinema. A degree in Modern Languages means you can acquire a range of skills that are very much sought after by employers. Our students go on to work in a variety of fields, from journalism to theatre, from music to academia, from cultural and educational institutions to management consultancy and investment banking. Clare is one of the most beautiful colleges in Cambridge: I particularly like the views from Clare bridge over the river Cam and the gardens, in every season. The college is also close to the University Library and to the Sidgwick site (where students attend their MML lectures), as well as to the town centre.