University of New Mexico Scholar to Be Honored by the Modern Language Association

Carmen Nocentelli, associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of New Mexico, has been selected to receive the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literature Studies from the Modern Language Association. She will receive the award at the group’s annual convention in Vancouver in January.

Dr. Nocentelli is being honored for her book Empires of Love: Europe, Asia, and the Making of Early Modern Identity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). The citation for the award states that in “this brilliant, broadly conceived study, the readings adroitly attend to materials in English, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish with expert erudition and theoretical insight. In pressing the relevance of race in the history of sexuality, Nocentelli offers a lucid and altogether compelling account of how eros turns into matters of ethnos. Historically grounded and deeply reflective, the book fruitfully opens fresh lines of research in early modern studies and theories of empire.”

Earlier this year, Dr. Nocentelli received the Roland H. Bainton Prize in Literature from the Sixteenth Century Society for the same book.

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.