Susan Gaylard completed her undergraduate work in her native South Africa, before studying at Berkeley and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Prof. Gaylard focuses on the early modern period, in particular the intersection between literature and material culture. Her book, Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and Public Identity in Renaissance Italy (Fordham, 2013) explores the linking of literary identity to objects (like books, coins, clothes, portraits, monuments, emblems), and the gendering of the literary canon. Her current project explores the gendering of popular historiography through visual-verbal interactions in 16th-century illustrated books.