James Hankins (born 1955) is an intellectual historian specializing in the

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

. He is the General Editor of the

I Tatti Renaissance Library The I Tatti Renaissance Library is a book series published by the Harvard University Press, which aims to present important works of Italian Renaissance Latin Literature to a modern audience by printing the original Latin text on each left-hand lea ...

and the Associate Editor of the

Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum Founded in 1945, with its first volume published in 1960, the ''Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum'' is a scholarly journal documenting the work of international scholars interested in classical tradition during the Middle Ages and Renaissa ...

. He is a professor in the History Department of

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. In Spring 2018, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

Center for Ethics and Culture. In 2012 he was honored with the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award of the

Renaissance Society of America The Renaissance Society of America (RSA) is an academic association founded in 1954 supporting the study of the Renaissance period, 1300–1650. The RSA brings together scholars from many backgrounds in a wide variety of disciplines from North A ...

Education and early career

Hankins was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. He took an A.B. in Classics from

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

(1977) and M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in History from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

(1985). At Columbia he worked with Eugene F. Rice and the historian of philosophy

Paul Oskar Kristeller Paul Oskar Kristeller (May 22, 1905 in Berlin – June 7, 1999 in New York, United States) was an important scholar of Renaissance humanism. He was awarded the Haskins Medal in 1992. He was last active as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Colum ...

, serving as the latter's research assistant for six years. In 1985 he joined the history faculty at

Work and recognition

Hankins' monographic work centers on the history of philosophy, theology, literature and political thought. Since 1998 he has been General Editor of the

, which he founded together with Walter Kaiser, Director of the Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Under Hankins' editorship the series has published over fifty volumes between 2001 and 2012 and sold close to 80,000 volumes. Since 2003 he has also been Associate Editor of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Translations and Commentaries, Annotated Lists and Guides, a publication founded by his mentor

in 1945. He is the author or editor of over twenty volumes and more than eighty articles, essays and book chapters. Many of his shorter writings are accessible online, via "Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard" (DASH). Hankins has been a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

, a member of the

Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

in the Humanities at

, a fellow and visiting professor at the Villa I Tatti, a

Guggenheim fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, a member of the

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

, and a recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. In 2010 he was Carlyle Lecturer in the History of Political Thought at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. In 2014 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

Books

* ''The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni'', 1987 (ed. and tr.), with Gordan Griffiths * ''Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller'', 1987 (ed.), with John Monfasani and Frederick Purnell * ''Plato in the Italian Renaissance'', 2 vols., 1990 * ''Repertorium Brunianum: A Critical Guide to the Writings of Leonardo Bruni'', vol. 1, 1997 * ''Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections'', 2000 (ed.) * ''The Lost Continent: Neo-Latin Literature and the Birth of European Vernacular Literatures'', 2001 (ed.) * ''Leonardo Bruni: History of the Florentine People'', 3 vols. 2001-7 (ed. and tr.) * ''Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology'', 6 vols., 2001-6 (ed.) * ''Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum'', vols. 8 (2003) and 9 (2011), Associate Editor * ''Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance'', 2 vols., 2003-4 * ''Maffeo Vegio: Short Epics'', 2004 (ed.), with

Michael C. J. Putnam Michael Courtney Jenkins Putnam (born September 20, 1933) is an American classicist specializing in Latin literature, but has also studied literature written in many other languages. Putnam has been particularly influential in his publications con ...

* ''The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy'', 2007 (ed.) * ''The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance'', 2008, with

Ada Palmer Ada Palmer (born June 9, 1981) is an American historian and writer and winner of the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her first novel '' Too Like the Lightning'' was published in May 2016. The work has been well received by criti ...

* ''Aurelio Lippo Brandolini: Republics and Kingdoms Compared'', 2009 (ed. and tr.) * ''Virtue Politics. Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy'', 2019

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hankins, James 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Living people 1955 births Historians of the Renaissance Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy American male non-fiction writers Duke University alumni Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Columbia University faculty Harvard University faculty