It is with great pleasure that we announce the appointment of Shane Butler as the new General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library as of November 1st. Butler, who is the Nancy H. and Robert E. Hall Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at John Hopkins University, specializes in the study of classical literature and its reception, Renaissance humanism, the history of sensation, the phenomenology of reading, and the history of sexuality. His publications include, The Hand of Cicero (2002), The Matter of the Page (2010), The Ancient Phonograph (2015), and The Passions of John Addington Symonds (2022). Butler served as Associate Editor for ITRL from 2008 until 2025.
In the 2027-2028 academic year, Leah Whittington, Professor of English and of Comparative Literature, and Affiliate Faculty in Classics at Harvard University, will join Butler as co-General Editor once she has completed an on-going university appointment. Whittington’s research focuses on the survival, transmission, and reception of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, Neo-Latin and vernacular literatures, the history of the emotions, and the history of philology. She is the author of Renaissance Suppliants: Poetry, Antiquity, Reconciliation (2016) as well as Antiquity Made Whole: Supplements, Completions, and the Recreation of the Classical Past in Renaissance Literary Culture, forthcoming in 2026. Whittington served as Associate Editor for ITRL from 2012 until 2025.
Butler and Whittington will continue the pioneering work of ITRL’s founding General Editor, James Hankins, Harvard University Professor of History, who for more than 20 years has brought the major literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific works of the Italian Renaissance written in Latin to a broader readership.
Over the next few months, Butler will work to reconfigure the structure of ITRL editorial participation to ensure the smooth continuation of the series.
We are thrilled that this fantastic series will continue with Butler and Whittington at its helm.