Naomi Yavneh-Klos received her A.B. from Princeton University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, all in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in Italian Renaissance Studies. A Professor of Languages and Cultures, she is the author of numerous articles on gender and spirituality in the representation of both the virginal and the maternal body in Renaissance Italy, as well as three award-winning essay collections on gender in the early modern world. A former president of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, she is former chair of the AJCU Honors Consortium and the Immediate Past President of the National Collegiate Honors Council.
From 2011-2018, Dr. Yavneh-Klos served as Director of Loyola’s University Honors Program, where she created a curriculum emphasizing social justice and diversity learning outcomes.
As executive board member (2015-2019) and President (2018) of the National Collegiate Honors Council (an international organization representing 900+ honors programs and colleges) her focus was on the role honors education can play in educating students regarding justice, and how honors itself can serve as a locus of access, equity and inclusive excellence in higher education.
The founding chair of the Council of Undergraduate Research’s Arts and Humanities division, the founding director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and former Associate Dean of the Honors College at the University of South Florida, Dr. Yavneh-Klos is committed to high impact practices that contribute to retention and graduation, and is an innovator in interdisciplinary and community-engaged curricular development. In addition to publications regarding honors, undergraduate research, and the pedagogy of justice (including, most recently, “Congregational Honors” [Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, Spring/Summer 2019] and the lead essay for the 2018 JNCHC forum on “Honors and Social Justice,”) she is a frequent presenter at conferences such as the National Society for Minorities in Honors, AACU and the European Honors Conference, and serves on the steering committee of the quadrennial Jesuit Justice Conference.
For the past two summers, Dr. Yavneh has collaborated with Hanze University for Applied Sciences and Westerbork Transit Camp, both in the Netherlands, on an honors summer institute on holocaust memory. In spring 2020, she will be researching her book, “Community, Diversity, Faith,” as a Fulbright Scholar at Windesheim Honours College in the Netherlands.
Degrees
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; A.B., Princeton University
Classes Taught
- Ignatian Colloquium
- Re-discovering 1912 (public history class)
- Writing as Spiritual Practice
- Interfaith Community and Collaboration
- Community, Diversity, Faith (First Year Seminar)
Areas of Expertise
Early modern gender studies, Italian Renaissance cultural and religious studies, Social justice pedagogy, Honors education and inclusive excellence, Interfaith leadership and community development