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 — whether language, Medieval politics, Renaissance literature, or Italian motherhood — 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 — she also spearheads helping others teach effectively, as with her recently co-edited casebook, Teaching Race in the European Renaissance.