Parker Receives Award For Work On New Hero On The Block

The Women’s Review of Books says, “There’s a new hero on the block, and her name is ‘Olympia Morata.’” The person responsible for the sixteenth century scholar/writer’s new found fame is Holt Parker, professor of classics, whose Olympia Morata: The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic won the 2003 Josephine Roberts Award for Best Book from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

Parker’s unique accomplishment is that he brought together and published, for the first time, all of Morata’s known writings. Provost Anthony Perzigian notes that Parker’s work and the subsequent award “bring great distinction to UC,” and Dean Karen Gould describes Parker as “a major international scholar.”

Historians and feminists regard Morata (1526-1555) as not only an important sixteenth century figure but as a continuing inspiration for women. Brilliant even in her youth, she gave public lectures and composed poetry, orations, and dialogues in both Latin and Greek. She fled her native Italy after becoming a Protestant Evangelical and sought religious freedom in Germany. Many felt her finest work was accomplished during the German years when she translated the Psalms into Greek.

The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, which granted Parker the honor, is a distinguished group of scholars “who study women and their contributions to the cultural, political, economic, or social spheres of the early modern period and whose interest in it includes attention to gender and representations of women.”