Education
PhD, Italian, Johns Hopkins University, 2019
MA, Italian, Università Cattolica
di
Milano, 2013
BA, Italian, Università Cattolica
di
Milano, 2010
Areas of Expertise
• 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
Biography
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.
Publications
- Dante at 700: Singleton Revisited, co-ed. Alberto Zuliani, spec. issue of MLN 1 (Johns Hopkins University Press: 2022)
- “Milton and Italian Early Modern Literary Theory: A Reassessment of the Journey to
Italy,” Milton Quarterly3-4 (2021): 185-200
- “Poeti interisti,” Paragone letteratura, 3rdseries, 72.153-154-155 (2021): 136-67.
- “The Role of Music in Tasso’s Reflections on the Value of Poetry,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance1 (2021): 101-23