Carmen Nocentelli Wins the Roland H. Bainton Prize in Literature

Carmen Nocentelli, associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of New Mexico, has received the Roland H. Bainton Prize in Literature from the Sixteenth Century Society. The award is given to the author of the best new book on the period 1450 to 1660.

Dr. Nocentelli was honored for her book Empires of Love: Europe, Asia, and the Making of Early Modern Identity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). The prize committee noted that  “in an extremely strong field, Nocentelli’s work stood out for its originality, scope, quality of research, clarity of writing, and elegance of argument. The book employs a thoroughly literary approach to understanding a difficult ideological issue, with a clear, incisive handling of the intricacies of race theory, colonial theory, and theories of sexuality. Jury members were especially impressed with Nocentelli’s gracious and subtle analyses of both Continental and English texts.”

Dr. Nocentelli has been on the faculty at the University of New Mexico since 2004 and was promoted to associate professor in 2012. She is a summa cum laude graduate of The Sapienza University of Rome. She earned a master’s degree in literature at American University in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Stanford University.