James Hankins

James Hankins is Professor of History at Harvard and widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on humanist political thought. He is an expert on the political theories and humanism of thinkers like Petrarch, Machiavelli and Leonardo Bruni. Hankins is founder and General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library, an authoritative series of bilingual editions of classical texts that aim to be the Renaissance version of the Loeb Classical Library. He is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy and Renaissance Civic Humanism. In his most recent book Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (2019), Hankins provides a groundbreaking interpretation of the political philosophy and pedagogy of the Renaissance.