JoAnn DellaNeva, professor of Romance languages and literatures, has been appointed academic director of University of Notre Dame’s London Global Gateway by Michael Pippenger, vice president and associate provost for internationalization.
During her two-year term, DellaNeva will hold full academic oversight of the Gateway, including the London undergraduate program and efforts to enhance the University’s research profile in London and beyond. DellaNeva succeeds Roger Alford, associate dean and professor of law.
DellaNeva is an expert in Renaissance literature and imitation theory and practice. Her research has been recognized with two NEH fellowships and the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference Literature Prize in 2004. A faculty member since 1982, DellaNeva also served as chair of her department from 1989-96 and as associate dean for undergraduate studies in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters from 2010-17.
DellaNeva taught undergraduate courses at the London Global Gateway twice before, along with her husband, Thomas P. Flint, professor of philosophy, who will teach as a faculty fellow in London during her appointment.
“JoAnn’s experience teaching at the London Global Gateway enables her to know what makes an excellent academic program for our undergraduates,” said Pippenger. “Her scholarship will help foster new research partnerships with universities in London and the U.K., and will encourage other faculty members to develop strategic collaborations that enrich the academic community for our students, faculty and alumni. Her leadership and our collective continued engagement in London can only enhance our presence in the U.K.”
“I’m looking forward to embracing this new challenge,” DellaNeva said. “I am eager to forge stronger ties with U.K. universities and intellectual centers to enhance academic programming at the Gateway in ways that benefit both faculty and students.”
As academic director, DellaNeva will be able to finish research she started at the British Library on an edition and English translation of a poem about the life and death of Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. Lancelot de Carle, who was living in London serving as secretary to the resident French ambassador in 1536, wrote the poem within two weeks of Anne’s execution.
“It’s a diplomatic dispatch in verse form,” DellaNeva said. “It’s a unique text, of interest to both historians and literary scholars, which conveys a powerful immediacy in telling the story of the unprecedented event of executing an anointed queen.”
Her next project will be a study of Henry VIII and his reign in the literary imagination of early modern (16th-17th century) French and Italian writers.
Through Notre Dame International, the University also maintains Global Gateways in Beijing, Dublin, Jerusalem and Rome.
Contact: Amanda Skofstad, Office of Media Relations, 574-631-4313, skofstad@nd.edu