Rate My Professor Carla Freccero

Carla Freccero was Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Literature Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), holding appointments in History of Consciousness and serving as affiliated faculty in Feminist Studies. She earned her A.B. in History and Literature from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Yale University in 1984. Freccero began her academic career in the Department of French and Italian at Dartmouth College before arriving at UCSC in 1991. Over her tenure, she assumed pivotal leadership roles, including four terms as Chair of the Literature Department intermittently from 2002 to 2025, Chair and Graduate Director of History of Consciousness, Director of the Center for Cultural Studies from 2007 to 2012, Interim Dean and then Associate Dean of the Humanities Division, Chair of the Academic Senate for two years, and Chair of the Committee on Academic Personnel. She was a founder of UCSC’s Institute for Humanities Research, precursor to The Humanities Institute, and played a key role in establishing the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research.

Freccero's research specialized in early modern literature, particularly sixteenth-century French literature reconceptualized as early modernity, with explorations of continuities and discontinuities linking the classical past to modernity and postmodernity. Her scholarship intersected gender, feminist, and queer studies, evident in works such as the co-edited volume Premodern Sexualities (1996), studies on Louise Labé and Marguerite de Navarre, and the monograph Queer/Early/Modern (2006). She examined early modern discourses on cannibals in relation to coloniality, race, post-humanism, and monster studies, and made foundational contributions to Animal Studies through analyses of Derrida’s writings on cats and canids. Other key publications include Popular Culture: An Introduction (1999), which became a standard classroom text, Father Figures: Genealogy and Narrative Structure in Rabelais (1991), and nearly eighty articles and book chapters. Her prolific output earned multiple prizes, grants, and honors. Renowned as a mentor, Freccero served on hundreds of doctoral and master’s committees, guiding numerous graduate students. As Principal Investigator for the Coha-Gunderson Prize in Speculative Futures, she curated student multimedia exhibits in 2023 and 2025. Carla Freccero passed away on January 28, 2026, at the age of 69.