Anna Wainwright

Excellence in Teaching, 2023

College of Liberal Arts

A scholar of Renaissance studies, gender and race, Anna Wainwright is also an extraordinarily effective and inspiring instructor. Students marvel at her deftness making connections between a wide range of complex concepts and approaches ¡ª whether language, Medieval politics, Renaissance literature, or Italian motherhood ¡ª and how she uses creative, hands-on assignments empowering them to connect these subjects meaningfully with their own lives and contemporary concerns.

One semester, for example, Wainwright integrated UNH¡¯s Social Innovation Challenge into her Intermediate Italian course. Making the challenge both linguistically and culturally relevant, students had to identify and research a social problem in Italy and suggest a solution based on their expanding international cultural competencies. The students created and filmed proposals in English for submission to the challenge, which they also translated into Italian; subsequently, Wainwright mentored three Innovation interns.

Students and colleagues praise Wainwright¡¯s impressive success training numerous students in rigorous, sophisticated, high-level research. One colleague states: ¡°Lots of us try to support and encourage undergraduate research. But what Anna does better than anyone is support students through the step-by-step process of undertaking research. She gives them a set of skills that she helps nourish until they take root and from which a student can grow future projects in addition to the one, they are undertaking under her guidance.¡±

Wainwright¡¯s pedagogical passion and acumen are such that she is not content to be an excellent teacher herself ¡ª she also spearheads helping others teach effectively, as with her recently co-edited casebook, Teaching Race in the European Renaissance.