Dr. Ron Witt and Petrarch
Ronald Witt, who has taught at Harvard and then Duke, has studied Petrarch and Italian humanism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries since graduate school. His most recent book, "In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni" (Leiden and New York, 2000) was awarded the Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association, the Phyliss Gordan Book Prize by the Renaissance Society of America, and the Jacques Barzun Prize by the American Philosophical Association. He has almost completed a study of Latin culture in medieval Italy entitled, "The Italian Difference: The Two Latin Cultures of Medieval Italy, 800-1250."