Santa Cruz, CA – Carla Freccero, daughter of Yvonne Freccero of Florence, died on January 28, 2026, at Stanford Hospital in California, after a brief illness. She was 69 years old.
Carla was a Distinguished Professor and Chair of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose faculty she joined in 1991. Her PhD from Yale was in Renaissance Studies and she specialized in 16th-century French, but during her career her interests and writing spanned many disciplines. She was an extraordinary teacher and gifted administrator and gave generously of herself, especially in training and mentoring hundreds of graduate students and in helping them secure their own academic positions.
She was a beloved member of her community; colleagues and friends too numerous to count are grieving.
In addition to them, Carla is survived by her mother, Yvonne, her brother, Stephen (and wife, Julie) of Larkspur, California, her sister, Francesca, of Portland, Oregon, her sister Paola, of San Carlos, California, two nieces, Isabella and Daniela Freccero, and her nephew, Elijah Dobkins.
There will be a memorial service in Santa Cruz in the spring.
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