About The Project

Begun in Spring 2020, the goal of The Letters of Marie Mancini project is to publish Marie Mancini’s approximately 900 letters that are held in the Colonna Archive at the Library of the Abbey of Santa Scolastica, in Subiaco, Italy. Approximately 100 letters have been transcribed so far, 37 of which have been translated into English and are browsable on this site.

Ultimately, the goal of this project is not only to provide a space for Marie Mancini’s voice to be freely accessed, but also to establish avenues for historical exploration. To this end, users may:

Read and view the letters;
Browse Marie’s correspondence in chronological order;
Follow her travels across Europe;
Download the letters’ text for further research.

Based at the University of Idaho, this project’s work has been accomplished so far thanks to a cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional group of researchers, and is supported by the University of Idaho Library’s Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL) and a University of Idaho Research, Infrastructure and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) grant.

Project Team:

Sarah Nelson is an associate professor of French in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Idaho. Before coming to the U of I in 1999, Nelson taught at Bates College and Bowdoin College, as well as at the University of Wisconsin, where she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. Her research focus has broadened from the French Renaissance to the early modern period, but her interest in questions of gender has remained constant.

Olivia Wikle is the Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of Idaho and a core member of the CDIL faculty. She holds a B.A. in Music from Truman State University, an M.A. in Musicology from The Ohio State University, and a Master of Library Science from Indiana University. Her research centers around digital humanities and digital collections practice and theory.

Alessandro Martina is a Ph.D. candidate in Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned a Master of Arts degree from West Virginia University in linguistics and second language acquisition and an M.A. from the University of Bologna in philosophy. His research interests are linguistics, the philosophy of language, rhetoric and poetry.

Liam Marchant, a junior studying music composition at the University of Idaho, is an undergraduate research assistant for this project, employed with CDIL.