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Northwestern University

Dean’s Book Wins Award

Dean Adrian Randolph's "Touching Objects” is honored by the American Association for Italian Studies

A book by Weinberg College Dean Adrian Randolph has won first prize in the 2016 American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS) Book Award competition.

The book, Touching Objects: Intimate Experiences of Italian Fifteenth-Century Art (Yale University Press, 2015), was recognized as the most distinguished critical study of Italian literature, history and culture in the Renaissance, 18th and 19th century category.

Members of the editorial board of Italian Culture, the AAIS’s journal, as well as prominent scholars in the profession served as the competition’s judges.

The College Art Association’s Reviews website, which publishes scholarly and critical reviews of art history projects, called Touching Objects “an impressive scholarly work” and a “remarkable performance” that demonstrates “where art history has traveled and what now might be asked and known about works of art.”

Randolph’s scholarly interests blend his specialization in medieval and Renaissance Italy with a diverse range of fields, including science, literature, social history and gender studies. His latest book reflects those interests, addressing items such as painted and sculpted portraits and marriage and betrothal gifts, and explores themes such as family and individual memory, windows, perspectival space, and touch. 

Randolph has authored, co-authored or edited eight other books as well as numerous articles, essays and reviews. He has also served on the international advisory board of the journal Art History as well as the University Press of New England.

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