This course explores the intersection of religion, gender, and race in the literature and culture of Renaissance Italy. Between 1350 and 1650, constructs of identity based on these categorizations consolidated into cultural norms that influenced modern colonialism and contemporary nationalism. In this course, we will investigate how texts and ideas that we normally place at the core of the myth of the Italian Renaissance were always in dialogue with fantasies of power, exceptionalism, and orientalism. We will pair close reading of a wide range of literary genres (romance, dramaturgy, fiction, travelogues, political writing) with visual artifacts and archival materials. Authors to be studied include Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Ariosto.