A UNM faculty member has been selected for three highly-coveted fellowships for 2016-17, according to a University statement.
However, the faculty member, Carmen Nocentelli, associate professor of English, has elected to spend the year as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The library has the world’s largest collection of Shakespeareana and is a major repository for rare books from the early modern period, according to the statement.
According to the statement, Nocentelli is an expert in 16th- and 17th-century literature.
She will spend her time at the library writing the manuscript of her second book to be titled “Black Legends and the Invention of Europe,” according to the statement. The book will identify the influence of “jingoistic propaganda” on the idea of Europe, according to the statement.
“When we say that there was no ‘Europe’ before the eighteenth century, it is often because we try to read history backward from the standpoint of the European Union. But ‘Europe’ and ‘European Union’ are not the same thing,” Nocentelli said in the statement. “Far from expressing a vision of unity and inclusion, ‘Europe’ emerged first and foremost as tool of division and exclusion. It is this paradox that my book will explore.”
