My work focuses on Renaissance and early modern Italy and Europe, with a strong interest in humanism, geocriticism, cartography, environmentalism, women's writing and gender studies, classical cultures, and intellectual history. I am currently working on two book projects. The first explores how the Italian Renaissance and European early modern legacy was received, revivified, and transformed in nineteenth century Italy during the Risorgimento. The second book engages with early modern environmentalism and traces the history of this theme in literature, art, and cartography. My work has been supported by the Modern Language Association, the University of Chicago Humanities Division and the Franke Institute for the Humanities.
Awards
- 2023 Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching
Selected Publications
- “Teaching Renaissance Literature With AI. Three Examples from the Italian Classroom” (under review)
- “Dislodging the Center: Cartographic Rhetoric and Machiavelli’s Geocriticism” (under review)
- "Reflecting on the Evolution of the Humanities. An Interview with John Guillory," Interview for the Journal for the History of Ideas Blog
- Review of Gendering the Renaissance: Text and Context in Early Modern Italy, ed. Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater, Modern Philology 122.2
- Review of Scampoli di ricerche critiche su Petrarca by Paolo Cherchi, Quaderni d’Italianistica 45.1
- “The Prehistory of the Operette Morali: Leopardi’s Early Machiavellism or How to Write Usefully,” Rivista Internazionale di Studi Leopardiani (2022): 33-50.
- “L’operetta morale di De Sanctis. Percorsi leopardiani all’interno di un dialogo desanctisiano,” Studi Desanctisiani (2021): 75-87.
Recent Courses in RLL
- ITAL10200 Beginning Elementary Italian (Winter 2021, Winter 2022)
- ITAL 20300 Italian Language, History, and Culture II (Spring 2022)
- ITAL 22900 1 Vico’s New Science (Autumn 2020)
- ITAL 23325 (In)Visible Women from Dante to Elena Ferrante: Bodies, Power, Identity (Winter 2025)
- ITAL 23822 The Renaissance of Emotions (Winter 2023)