Before joining the department in 2018, Beatrice completed her studies at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, her research focuses on Renaissance and early modern Italian literature and her interests include early modern philosophy, political theory, the history of cartography, and affect studies. In her research and teaching, she studies the emergence and evolution of what may be characterized as an “Italian” intellectual tradition and reconstructs the history that underlies the articulation of an Italian cultural identity in the nineteenth century. Her dissertation, titled Going the Distance: The Coherence of Tradition from Petrarch to Leopardi, investigates how and why Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), the highest model of the poet-philosopher according to Nietzsche, strives to further the Italian Renaissance and early modern legacy through a reassessment of interconnected intellectuals like Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Vico, who together codified the linguistic, political, and philosophical tradition of Italian letters.
Her passion for interdisciplinary collaborations has led her to investigate the physical mechanisms underlying the topology of Dante’s Hell for the UChicago Arts, Science, and Culture Initiatives-sponsored project Dante in the Lab.
She has taught Italian language courses at different levels and finds teaching to be a fun, inspiring, and rewarding experience. Beatrice is the recipient of the 2023 Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
Recent Courses in RLL
- Vico’s New Science (Autumn 2020)
- ITAL 10200 Beginning Elementary Italian II (Winter 2021, Winter 2022))
- Course Design and College Teaching (Autumn 2022)
- Italian Language, History, and Culture II (Spring 2022)
- The Renaissance of Emotions (Winter 2023)