Elizabeth Bernhardt, PhD, Joins Faculty of Italian at Washington University in St Louis

We congratulate Elizabeth Bernhardt, PhD, on joining the Faculty of Italian at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Bernhardt currently serves as Vice-President of the St Louis - Bologna Sister Cities and as a consigliere in Club Italiano Per Piacere, the only exclusively Italian speaking club in the Midwest. 

Elizabeth Bernhardt's major research interests focus on women’s culture and family life in Renaissance Italy. She also studies Italian artists and artisan culture from the 15th century as well as in today’s world. She completed her PhD in early modern European history at the University of Toronto and has lived in Italy for over twenty years. There she taught a variety of Italian history and culture courses for the University of California in Rome, the American University of Rome and the Liceo Classico Statale Giulio Cesare in Rome. In Rome she published two manuals on early modern Italian art history for her students. In the past she has also enjoyed teaching Italian courses at Saint Louis University. She loves Italy and is thrilled to be teaching Italian language and culture courses now at Washington University.

Her area of specialization is 15th century Bologna, and her manuscript on Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441-1507) and her enormous family won an award in dissertation form and is about to be published as a thoroughly revised book at a university press. Based on contemporary archival research conducted across Italy, her revisionist biography presents Genevra as the object of serious academic study for the first time—because until now Genevra has been known only through negative posthumous accounts used to destroy her image and reputation. The book explores how Genevra’s life turned into a developing saga (500+ years in the making) about how she destroyed her family and the city of Bologna, known for its ancient university culture and critical thinking.