Congratulations to Prof. Konrad Eisenbichler on being awarded an Honourable Mention for the prestigious Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize of the Modern Language Association of America. The prize was awarded for his book The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). The committee’s citation for the honorable mention reads:

Konrad Eisenbichler’s lucid, elegant, and original volume brings to light the virtually unknown writings and lives of a circle of sixteenth-century Sienese women poets. This intriguing historical study, commentary, and anthology will be a precious contribution to the history of Italian lyric and religious poetry in the early modern period, to women’s studies, and to Renaissance studies. Eminently readable, “The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena” is the product of extensive archival work that engages broadly with existing scholarship in literary history and criticism, providing the reader with all the descriptive and analytic information necessary for an understanding of the biographies of the Sienese poets and a measured evaluation of their poems, including an appreciation of their contrasting styles and aesthetic orientations.