Justin Steinberg
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
1115 E. 58th Street.
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: Wieboldt 223
Phone: 773/702-2854
Email: hjstein@uchicago.edu
Associate Professor of Italian
Professor Steinberg joined the faculty of Romance Languages and Literatures in 2003. Previously he was the Devers Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. His scholarship focuses on medieval Italian literature, especially on Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, the early lyric, manuscript culture, and literary historiography. His interests include the intersection of legal and literary culture and the history of the book.
His recent book Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy (Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP, 2007) won the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Manuscript in Italian Studies awarded by the Modern Language Association. He has also published articles on the Compiuta donzella (the first female poet of Italian literature), Dante's dreams in the Vita Nuova, and Petrarch's uncollected poems. His current projects include studies of Petrarch's material philology ("Petrarch and the Anxiety of Dispersion") and of the legal crises underlying Dante's poetry ("Law and Justice in Dante's Commedia")
Education
- Ph. D. University of Minnesota 2000
- B.A. University of California, Berkeley 1991
Awards, Honors, and Professional Experience
- MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literature, 2005.
- Franke Institute for the Humanities Fellow, University of Chicago, 2005-2006.
- Fulbright-Hayes Grant for research in Italy, 1996-97
Selected Courses Taught
Dante's Divine Comedy; Dante e i suoi rivali; Poeti del Duecento; The Making and the Unmaking of Petrarch's Canzoniere; Boccaccio minore; Boccaccio's Decameron.