Directory

Summary of Expertise

Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature, History, and Culture; History of Education (Middle Ages and Renaissance); Paleography and History of the Book.

Research Interests

Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature, History, and Culture; History of Education (Middle Ages and Renaissance); Paleography and History of the Book; Classical Literature; ; Primo Levi and Holocaust Literature.

Biography, Education and Training

I am originally from Modena, Italy. I have received a BA and MA in Letteratura italiana from the Università degli studi di Bologna, and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame. After completing my Ph.D., I taught at Vassar College and Smith College. I have been part of the Literature Department at UCSC since 2019. I work on le Tre Corone and lay education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I am interested in the ways literature and education (particularly literacy) intersect with and inform each other. I have published mostly on the topic of Dante’s intellectual formation and I am currently writing a book provisionally titled “Training the Reader: Dante and the Rise of Vernacular Literacy.” The book investigates Dante's debts to his earliest school readings and his critical stance toward contemporary education.

EDUCATION

Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, Medieval Studies, August 2017

M.A., University of Notre Dame, Romance Languages and Literatures, May 2011

M.A., magna cum laude, Università di Bologna, European Literatures and Civilizations, October 2008

B.A., Università di Bologna, Literature, October 2006

Honors, Awards and Grants

      2023 ISSNAF Award for Young Investigators, RnB4 Culture: Ex-aqequo winner

University of California

        EVC Writing Fellow (AY 2022-2024)

 Puknat Literary Endowment (AY 2021 & 2023)

The Humanities Institute Faculty Research & Publication Grant (Summer 2022)

University of California Humanities Institute Grant for Conference Organization (AY 2023-24)

University of California Humanities Institute Junior Manuscript Workshop (Spring 2022)

Hellman Fellowship (Summer 2021)

The Humanities Institute Faculty Research Fellowship (Fall 2020)

UCSC Committee of Research Grant (Spring 2020; Spring 2021; Summer 2022)

Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship (AY 2019-20; fellowship declined to accept tenure-track position)

ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (Academic Year 2016-17)

Mellon/Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Fellowship (Paleography School, Summer 2015)

Selected Publications

Books

        Dante's Education: Latin Schoolbooks and Vernacular Poetics (Oxford: OUP, 2024) 

        With Ronald Herzman eds., Dante's Paradiso: A Reader's Guide (forthcoming: Routledge, 2025)

Articles and Notes

“Resurrecting the Social Body (Paradiso 14),” Humanities 13 (2024), https://doi.org/10.3390/h13020059.

Notes on “… la luce del giorno ci giungeva” and “Jean è attentissimo,” in Primo Levi: A Digital Commentary, ed. by Robert Gordon et alii (2023) at https://levidigitalcommentary.org/.

“A ‘Whirlwind of Eloquence:’ Sources for a Moral Reading of Ulysses’s ‘turbo’ (Inf. XXVI, 137),” Italian Studies 76.1 (2021): 1–17, DOI: 10.1080/00751634.2020.1855875.

“Stranded on Purgatory Island: A Dantean Reflection on the Disaster of Isolation (and Why We Are Not in Hell),” Le Tre Corone 8 (2021): 147–149. Republished with permission from Breaking Ground, https://breakingground.us/stranded-on-purgatory-island/.

“‘Poca favilla, gran fiamma seconda’ (Par. I, 34): un proverbio d’autorità,” Le Tre Corone 7 (2020): 133–58.

“Pro patria mori: From the Disticha Catonis to Dante’s Cato,” Dante Studies 135 (2017): 1–30.

“Did Dante Know the Ilias latina? Textual Echoes in the Prologue to the Purgatorio,” Dante Notes (November 2017). https://www.dantesociety.org/node/120.

“Pride and Tyranny: An Unnoted Parallel between Purgatorio 12 and Policraticus 8.20–21,” Dante Notes (May 2016). https://www.dantesociety.org/publicationsdante-notes/pride-and-tyranny-unnoted-parallel-bet ween-purgatorio-12-and-policraticus.

Essays in Edited Volumes

Written with Ronald Herzman, “Introduction: A Restless Paradise,” in Dante’s Paradiso: A Reader’s Guide (forthcoming: Routledge, 2025)

Chapter Seven, “The Body of Knowledge (Paradiso 14),” in Dante’s Paradiso: A Reader’s Guide (forthcoming: Routledge, 2025).

“Donne e divisioni: The Educational Core of the Vita nova,” in Dante’s Vita Nova: A Collaborative Reading, ed. Zygmunt G. Barański, David Bowe, Heather Webb (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2023), .

“Gli auctores scolastici nella formazione classica del poeta,” in ‘Nostra maggior musa.’ I maestri della letteratura classica nella ‘Commedia’ di Dante, ed. John Butcher (Città di Castello: Nuova Phromos, 2021), 217–233.

“Cato (and His Distichs) Between Brunetto and Dante: Uses and Misuses of a Patriotic Icon,” in Reconsidering Dante and Brunetto Latini (and Bono Giamboni), ed. Zygmunt G. Barański, Theodore J. Cachey, and Luca Lombardo (Rome: Salerno, 2019), 173–191.

“Ritornerò profeta: The Epistle of St. James and the Crowning of Dante’s patience,” in Ethics, Politics, and Law in Dante, ed. Giulia Gaimari and Catherine Keen (London: UCL Press, 2019), 94–110.

“Dante scolaro: alcune note sul Catone dantesco e i Disticha Catonis,” in Atti del secondo seminario dantesco AlmaDante. Università di Bologna, 28-29 maggio 2014, ed. Giuseppe Ledda (Bologna: Aspasia, 2017), 85–97.

“L’immagine riflessa: il Dante di Sacchini tra vita e poesia,” in Bruno Sacchini, Piccarda c’est moi. Nella selva del vissuto dantesco (Florence: Società Fiorentina Editrice, 2013), 83–96.

Dictionary Entries

“Patrio, Gargarizzazione, Gargozzo, Gemello, Gialligno, Gladiatore, Gladiatorio, Gladiatura, Gombuto, (and 50 more).” In Pietro Beltrami and Paolo Squillacioti. Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini. (Rome: Centro Nazionale di Ricerca, 2013). http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO/. A selection of these entries is also published in “Scelta di voci del Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (diciassettesima serie),” Bollettino dell’Opera del Vocabolario Italiano 18 (2013): 7–13.

Book Reviews

“Tony Hunt, ed., ‘Disticha Catonis’ Everard and Elie de Wincestre” (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2022). Pp. 106.” Speculum (2024).

“Martin Eisner, Dante’s New Life of the Book. A Philology of World Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). Pp. 259.” Modern Philology (2022). https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/721423 

“Roberto Rea and Justin Steinberg ed., Dante (Rome: Carocci, 2020). Pp. 409.” Annali d’Italianistica 39 (2021). https://annali.org/volume-39-2021/

“Elena Lombardi. Imagining the Woman Reader in the Age of Dante (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Pp. 279.” L’Alighieri (2022): 162–165.

Work-in-Progress

The Element Dante in Primo Levi’s “Il sistema periodico:” From Fascist Education to Comic Resilience

Boccaccio’s Olympia (Buccolicum Carmen): Against the Ecloga Theoduli on the Salvation of Non-Christians

Selected Presentations

SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS & LECTURES

Public Webinar Episode: Episode Seven. The Body of Knowledge
https://thi.ucsc.edu/event/project-paradiso-a-gateway-to-dantes-heaven-episode-five-the-sun-paradiso-10-13-and-the-body-of-knowledge-paradiso-14/

Public Webinar Episode: Episode 1. Introduction:  A Restless Paradise (With Ronald Herzman)
https://thi.ucsc.edu/event/project-paradiso-a-gateway-to-dantes-heaven-episode-one-introduction-a-restless-paradise/

Paper Presenter: "Imparare a Piangere: L'Elegia di Arrigo da Settimello tra Vita nova e Eden." La Vita nova: un testo fiorentino. International Symposium (UNiversity of Bergamo, May 2024) INVITED

The Resurrection of the Social Body in Paradiso. Internation Workshop (Notre Dame, Rome, May 2024) INVITED

"The Alphabet." Response Paper presented at the The Mediterranean Seminar (Bolder, 2023) PEER REVIEWED

Yesterday's Hangover and the Oak Tree: Boccaccio Stays in the Country Side (MLA Annual Convention, San Francisco, January 2023) 

"Dante&Boccaccio VS Education: A Lesson in Cross-cultural Pastoral" (UCSC, Center For Cultural Studies, Annual Lecture Series)

“Pastoral Syncretism: The Ecloga Theoduli From Dante’s Purgatorio to Boccaccio’s Olympia” (Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, Ireland 2022)

“‘Sum miser et miseri nullus miserans misereretur:’Arrigo da Settimello tra Dante e l’elegia latina” (Congresso Internazionale Dantesco, Ravenna, Italy, September 2021)

“Dante: il limite della legge e il mistero della giustizia” (Lecture delivered at the Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago, Chile, August 2021)

“The Element Dante in Primo Levi’s ‘Il Sistema periodico’” (Biannual Meeting of the California Italian Studies Conference, UC Davies, March 2021)

“Who is Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Dante, Aesop & The Latin Fable” (Symposium of the Dante Society of America, University of Saint Louis, September 2020)

“The Vernacular and the Contested Territories of Learning: England, Italy, and France,” Panel Organizer and Presenter (Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, UC Berkeley, March 2020)

 Webinar Organizer: Project Paradiso: Exploring Dante's Heaven. Public, By-Weekly Webinar. https://thi.ucsc.edu/projects/project-paradiso-a-gateway-to-dantes-heaven/ 

Panel Organizer and Presenter: Five Dante Society of America-Sponsored Panels at the annual convention of the Renaissance Society of America (Chicago, March 2024)

Four Dante Society of America-Sponsored Panels at the annual convention of the Renaissance Society of America (Boston, March 2025)

The Renaissance of Dante’s Vita nuova
Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, March 9-11 2023 (San Juan, Puerto Rico). Panel Sponsored by the Dante Society of America

Panel Organizer: Dottrina: Poetics of Vernacular Learning In and After Dante
Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, March 30 – 2 April 2022 (Dublin). Panel Sponsored by the Dante Society of America

INTERVIEWS “Lessons from Dante in a time of Covid,” UCSC NewsCenter (January 2021), https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/01/dante-feature-story-gianferrari.html

Selected Recordings

“Dante 700 anni dalla morte: il poeta pop che piace ai ragazzi e spopola all’estero,” Euro News (March 2021), https://it.euronews.com/2021/03/25/dante-700-anni-dalla-morte-il-poeta-pop-che-piace-ai-ragazzi-e-spopola-all-estero

Teaching Interests

Medieval Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature and Culture; Paleography and Book History; Primo Levi and Holocaust Literature; Pandemic and Literature; Translation Theory.