Professor Brittany Asaro Receives Graves Award for Teaching in the Humanities

University of San Diego Assistant Professor Brittany Asaro, PhD, has been awarded a prestigious Graves Award in recognition of her “outstanding accomplishment in actual teaching in the humanities.”

Dr. Asaro is an assistant professor and director of Italian in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Literatures, as well as an affiliated faculty member in the USD's Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Women’s and Gender Studies programs. Her scholarly research focuses on love motifs and theories as well as the representation of women in early modern Italian literature. She has published several essays on Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, a collection of short stories written during and about the fourteenth-century pandemic known as the Black Death.

“I am honored to be a recipient of the Graves Award for Actual Teaching in the Humanities,” Dr. Asaro shares. The award will fund her travel to the Newberry Library in Chicago for training in paleography – the study of manuscripts. This training will be conducted by the American Boccaccio Association, an organization dedicated to the study of the fourteenth-century Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio. This hands-on experience will assist Dr. Graves in her research as well as her teaching.“ This training will empower me to guide students in a more intimate and relevant exploration of early modern texts. As part of my award project, I will also be developing a class in which students will explore early editions of Boccaccio’s works right here in San Diego, including some at our own Copley Library,” she explained.

The Arnold L. Graves and Lois S. Graves Awards in the Humanities are administered by Pomona College under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. These awards are presented every two years to faculty members from select liberal arts institutions across California, Oregon and Washington.

"We are very proud of Dr. Asaro for receiving this prestigious award, which supports the development of creative and contemporary teaching in the humanities," said Noelle Norton, PhD, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "Helping our students to engage with course material in new and exciting ways that enhance the benefits of their liberal arts education is central to the mission and vision of USD and the College of Arts and Sciences."