Assistant Professor
PhD, Italian, Johns Hopkins University, 2019
MA, Italian, Università Cattolica
di
Milano, 2013
BA, Italian, Università Cattolica
di
Milano, 2010
• Renaissance Italian and English literature (epic, sacred poetry, and poetic theory)
• The intersection of literature and other disciplines (history, music, science, and
sports)
• Modern and contemporary Italian poetry
My main research project is broadly dedicated to how the value of fiction and poetry was defined in the Italian Renaissance—the “why” of literature. I study this question by examining Renaissance pedagogies, treatises on poetics, epic poems, reflections on the value of literature vis-à-vis other disciplines (music, history, philosophy, theology, science), sacred poetry, and John Milton’s work, which I take as the culmination of the previous Italian tradition. I am also keen to organize and participate in community outreach initiatives to discuss how Renaissance poetics can help us define the value of literature and the arts today. My other area of inquiry is the representation of sports (soccer in particular) in literature, from Dante and the Renaissance to twentieth- and twenty first-century Italian poetry. I am also interested in pedagogy: I have taught a variety of language and literature courses at Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University Bloomington, and I obtained the Johns Hopkins Teaching Academy Certificate and the Dean’s Teaching Fellowship. Finally, I studied jazz piano, arrangement, and I took courses at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. While in Italy, I worked as a performer and as a piano teacher. In New York, I have been been collaborating as a composer with lyricists and librettists for musical theater projects in workshops run by the Dramatist Guild Institute.