Distinguished Professor of Literature Carla Freccero dies at 69

Carla Freccero, distinguished professor and chair of the Literature Department and a beloved mentor to hundreds of graduate students, died this week at Stanford Hospital, surrounded by loved ones. She was 69.

By Dan White

Freccero’s career was marked not only by scholarly achievement but by a profound commitment to community, mentorship and intellectual engagement.

Her colleagues in the Literature Department called attention to her seemingly limitless energy, which she turned into a lifelong avocation for doing work that mattered. 

Freccero dedicated herself to providing new sources of support—intellectual, financial, professional—for all the students she befriended and guided over the years. A highly sought-after and beloved adviser of graduate students, she served on hundreds of doctoral and master’s degree committees.

She earned her undergraduate degree in history and literature from Harvard and completed her Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies at Yale in 1984. She began her career at Dartmouth College in the Department of French & Italian.

From the time of her arrival at UC Santa Cruz in 1991, Freccero brought a combination of intellectual firepower and institutional service not only to the Literature Department but to the Humanities Division and the campus as a whole.

Over the next three decades, Freccero left her mark on campus through both her academic work and her leadership.  

Her prodigious research – she had over 80 published scholarly articles – often focused on gender, feminism and queer studies. This includes her coedited volume Premodern Sexualities (1995–96), her work on writers like Louise Labé and Marguerite de Navarre, and her influential 2006 book Queer/Early/Modern. 

She also explored topics like early modern ideas about cannibals, which intersected with issues of colonialism, race and questions about monstrosity.

Freccero stayed engaged with the modern world as well. Her 1999 book Popular Culture: An Introduction became a widely used classroom text.

Her work in Animal Studies and speculative futures reflected her continuing interest in the boundaries of the human and imaginative exploration of alternate worlds. In her work, she examined such texts as The Animal That Therefore I Am, in which the philosopher Jacques Derrida uses the intense gaze of his own cat—looking directly at him—to challenge traditional philosophy’s human-centric viewpoints.

She served four terms as chair of the Literature Department and one in the  History of Consciousness Department, held a joint appointment in Women’s Studies/Feminist Studies, directed the Center for Cultural Studies, and served as interim dean for the Humanities and associate dean. She was also a valued member of numerous Academic Senate committees.

She was one of the founders of UC Santa Cruz’s Institute for Humanities Research, precursor to The Humanities Institute. As principal investigator for the Coha-Gunderson Prize in Speculative Futures, Freccero curated student multimedia exhibits in 2023 and 2025, emphasizing creativity, collaboration and intellectual curiosity. In 2024, she wrote an essay for THI’s website about her love for speculative fictions that help her envision other worlds and possibilities:

“Much of it imagines the technological innovations we would want (those flying cars we were promised in the fifties), including technologies of everyday life, technologies of governance and decision-making, and technologies of care for the earth,” Freccero wrote. “They give me hope, not only because I can imagine the worlds crafted in those texts, but also because there are people who can imagine such worlds, imagine them better, and bring them into being virtually.”

Freccero is preceded in death by her father, Professor John Freccero of New York University. She is survived by her mother, Yvonne, of Northampton, Massachusetts; brother Stephen of Larkspur; sisters Francesca of Portland, Oregon, and Paola of San Carlos; nieces Isabella and Daniela; nephew Elijah; and her beloved Borzoi dog, Ruki. Memorial activities will be announced soon.

Original Link: https://news.ucsc.edu/2026/01/distinguished-professor-of-literature-carla-freccero-dies-at-69/

 Banner Image: Photo of an exhibit from the Coha-Gunderson Prize in Speculative Futures.