About

My research focuses on literary authorship in Italian culture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I study how writers in the vernacular drew on learnèd disciplines like theology and law to establish their authority.

I usually write on major figures such as Dante and Petrarch, although I am also interested in their less well-known contemporaries such as Guido Guinizzelli, Brunetto Latini, or Cino da Pistoia. I have published several articles on the connection between medieval authorship and the experience of exile and am preparing a book manuscript on this topic. Forthcoming work will examine the theory of characterization in Dante and in Petrarch.

I have also published on twentieth-century Italian culture, including articles on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s theater and his narrative realism, and an article and a book chapter on the translation of dialect poetry.