Karla Mallette is Professor of Italian (Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures), and Chair and Professor of Mediterranean Studies (Dept. of Middle East Studies) at the University of Michigan. Her most recent monograph, Lives of the Great Languages: Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean (2021), was awarded the MLA Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies. She works on communications between languages and literary traditions in the medieval Mediterranean—especially Arabic, Latin and the Romance vernaculars—and the way that we remember that history today. She traces the histories of things that travel from one shore of the Mediterranean to another – people, books, ideas, and material objects – how they are transformed in the process, and the transformative cultural impact they have in a new land.
The Karla Mallette lecture is supported by a generous donation by the Mancini Family in memory of Professor Albert Mancini, with additional support by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Department of English.
