EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Renaissance Studies, Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York. February 2001.

M.Phil., M.A. Comparative Literature, GSUC, CUNY. May 1998, October 1996

Italian "laurea" dregree with honors in Classical Literature. Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy, June, 1991.

PUBLICATIONS

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

 “Examples, References and Quotations in Sixteenth-Century Medical Texts.” In Citation, Intertextuality, and Memory in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Edited by Yolanda Plumley, Giuliano Di Bacco and Stefano Jossa. Forthcoming (Exeter: University of Exeter Press).

“Tasso’s melancholy and its treatment: a patient’s uneasy relationship with medicine and physicians.” In Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. Edited by Yasmin Haskell. Forthcoming (Turnhout: Brepols).

Introduction to the English translation of Tomaso Garzoni’s L’hospedale de’ pazzi incurabili by Daniela Pastina and John Crayton. Forthcoming (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies).

“A Case of Melancholic Humors and Dilucida Intervalla.” Intellectual History Review, 18:1 (March 2008) 139-154.

“Sixteenth-Century Imprese for and by Women: Scipione Bargagli’s Dell’imprese and Girolamo Ruscelli’s Le imprese illustri,” in The Italian Emblem. Ed. by Donato Mansueto and Elena Calogero (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 2007) 65-91.

“Medicina practica, consilia and the Illnesses of the Head in Girolamo Mercuriale and Giulio Cesare Claudini. Similarities and Differences of the Sexes.” Medicina e storia. Vol. 11 (October 2006): 63-83.

“Garzoni’s L’ hospedale de’ pazzi incurabili and the Ambiguous Relation between Word and Image in Sixteenth-Century Impresa.” Emblematica. Vol. 13 (2003): 97-130.

“Medical and Moral Dimensions of Feminine Madness: Madwomen in the Renaissance.” Forum Italicum. Vol. 36 (Spring 2002): 26-51. 

BOOK REVIEWS

Dale, Sharon, Alison WIlliams Lewin, Duane J. Osheim, eds. Chroniclers and Historians in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2007. Renaissance Quarterly, 62:2 (Spring 2009): 181-182.

Cascione, Giuseppe.  Iconocrazia: Comunicazione e politica nell'Europa di Carlo V. Dipinti, emblemi e monete. Milan: Edizioni Ennerre, 2006. Emblematica, vol 16 (2008). 

Zatti, Sergio.  The Quest for Epic From Ariosto to Tasso.  The University of Toronto Press, 2006. Renaissance Quarterly, 60:2 (Summer 2007): 511-512.

Neely, Carol Thomas. Distracted Subjects. Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. Jackson, Ken. Separate Theaters. Bethlem (“Bedlam”) Hospital and the Shakespearean Stage. Dual Book Review Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol 56:4 (Winter 2005): 484-87.

Finucci, Valeria.  The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance; Vignali, Antonio.  La Cazzaria. The Book of the Prick.  Edited and translated by Moulton.  Dual Book Review, Renaissance Quarterly.  Vol. 57:3 (Fall 2004): 975-78.

Beecher, Donald, Massimo Ciavolella, Roberto Fedi, eds.  Ariosto Today. Contemporary Perspectives.  Toronto: Buffalo: London: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Book Review, Quaderni d’Italianistica. Vol. 24:2 (2003): 112-114.

Micaela Rinaldi.  Torquato Tasso e Francesco Patrizi. Tra polemiche letterarie e incontri intellettuali.  Ravenna: Longo Ed., 2001.  Book review, Renaissance Quarterly.  Vol. 56:2 (Spring 2003): 170-171.

Rozsnyói, Zsuzanna. Dopo Ariosto. Tecniche narrative e discorsive nei poemi ariosteschi. Ravenna: Longo Editore. Book Review, Quaderni d’italianistica. Vol. 21:2 (2000): 155-157. 

BOOKS AND ARTICLES IN PROGRESS OR SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION

The Madness of Paolo Barbieri of Bologna: a Comparison of Social, Legal and Medical Perspectives. Book in progress.

Emblems of Death in the Early modern Period.  Edited by Monica Calabritto and Peter M. Daly. Book in progress. 

“The Doctors and His Patients: The Method of Curing Melancholia in Sixteenth-Century Medical Consilia and Observationes.” In Medicina nei secoli, monographic issue on the subject ‘Mali del corpo, mali dell’anima: malinconia, consunzione e mal d’amore tra medicina e letteratura’. Article in progress.

“Melancholic furor between legal theory and practice.” Essay submitted to Pickering and Chatto for publication in a collection of essays on the cultural history of emotions commissioned by the International Society for Cultural History.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

A. LECTURES, PAPERS, CONFERENCE PANELS (chair, organizer, invited speaker, speaker)

Chair:“Emblematic Visual Culture and the Sciences II”. Renaissance Society of America Conference, Los Angeles, March 19-21, 2009.

“Emblems and Medicine: Figures, Metaphors, Representations.” Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, April 3-5, 2008.

“Emblems in Early Modern England.” Renaissance Society of America, Miami, March 23, 2007.

“The scope of Emblems.” Renaissance Society of America Conference, Miami, March 22, 2007.

ORGANIZER

“Care of the Body, Care of the Soul: Melancholy in an European Context”. Co-organizer of 4 session on melancholy, Renaissance Society of America, Los Angeles, March 19-21, 2009.

“Early Modern Readers of Emblem Books.” Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, April 3-5, 2008.

“Languages of Madness and Possession: Law, Medicine and Demonology in Early Modern Italy.” Renaissance Society of America conference, San Francisco, March 23-25, 2006.

“Attitudes to Madness in Early Modern Europe.” Renaissance Society of America, Cambridge, UK, April 7-9, 2005.

“Between Magic and Medicine: Ariosto’s Minor Works.” American Association of Italian Studies, Ottawa, Canada, April 29-May 2, 2004.

“Emblems/imprese, authorship and women.” Renaissance Society of America Conference, New York, April 1-3, 2004.

INVITED SPEAKER

"La figura del mediatore tra Italia e Stati Uniti." Lecture, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy, May 21 2009.

“The Madness of Paolo Barbieri of Bologna: A Comparison of Social, Legal and Medical Perspectives.” The Society for the Study of Women in the Renaissance, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, October 16, 2008.

“Melancholic humors” between medical and legal traditions”. Franklin and Marshall College, January 23, 2007.

“Pazzia negli archivi: un documento inedito di Girolamo Mercuriale circa un caso di ‘humori melanconici’”. International conference on Girolamo Mercuriale, Associazione Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine. Forlì, November 8-11, 2006.

 “Garzoni's L' Hospedale de'pazzi incurabili. The different faces of madness". Lecture, University of Exeter, November 7, 2006.

“Learned and popular visions of Medicine and Madness.” Lecture, The Center for European Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, January 25, 2006.

“Stories of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Italian Chronicles.” Symposium on Themes in Renaissance History and History of Art, University of Warwick in Venice, Venice, November 30/December 1, 2004.

“Popular perceptions of Madness: A Study of the City Chronicles of Bologna, Ferrara and Venice.” Lecture, Simpson Center for the Humanities, Science Studies Series. University of Washington. April 27, 2004.

SPEAKER

"Chronicles and Social Memory in Sixteenth-Century Bologna" Paper to be delivered at the Annual Conference organized by the International Society fro Cultural History on the topic "Cultural Histories: Close Readings, Critical Syntheses", Turku, Finland, May 26-30 2010

“Tasso’s letter to Mercuriale (1583): melancholy between medicine and magic.” Renaissance Society of America Conference, Los Angeles, March 19-21, 2009.

“Melancholic furor between legal theory and practice”. The Cultural History of Emotions in Premodernity. 23-26 October 2008, Umeå University, Sweden.

“Five Chronicles of Paolo’s Madness.” Renaissance Society of America Conference, Chicago, April 3-5, 2008.

“Girolamo Mercuriale’s consilium on ‘melancholic humors’ between medical and legal traditions.” “Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Era.” Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia, Perth, 22-23 September 2006.

 “Violence and Madness in Early Modern Italian Chronicles.” Lecture co-sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund, the CUNY Doctoral Program in Comparative Literature, Specialization in Italian and the CUNY Renaissance Certificate Program. The Graduate Center, CUNY, May 11, 2006.

“The madness of Paolo Barbieri of Bologna: comparing city chronicles, medical consilia, and criminal trials” Renaissance Society of America, Cambridge, UK, April 7-9, 2005.

“Doctors, chroniclers and nuns: Official and ‘popular’ visions of madness in Sixteenth- Century Italy.” Giornata di Studio: New Work in the history of science and medicine.”  Villa I Tatti, Florence, February 8, 2005.

“Ariosto’s Erbolato and the distillation of medical tradition.” American Association of Italian Studies. Ottowa, Canada. April 29-May 2, 2004.

“ ‘Huius...horrendae affectionis salutaria remedia à nobis sunt inquistia...’ Innovation and Tradition in Early Medical Remedies.” Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, Canada, March 27-29, 2003. 

“Sixteenth-century imprese for and by women: Scipione Bargagli’s Dell’imprese and Girolamo Ruscelli’s Le imprese illustri.” VI International Emblem Conference, Society for Emblem Studies, La Coruña, Spain, September 10-14, 2002. 

“Whose Madness and According to Whom? Theoretical and Practical Perspectives on the Notion of pazzia in Early Modern Italy.” Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science, New Orleans, February 22-23, 2002.

“Garzoni’s L’ hospedale de’ pazzi incurabili and the ambiguous relation between word and image in the sixteenth-century impresa.” Renaissance Society of America Conference, Chicago, March 29-31, 2001.

B. EDITORIAL BOARD, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Editorial Advisory Board of Renaissance Quarterly, 2006-2009

Book review editor for H-Italy <http://www.h-net.org/~italy/> (Middle Ages and Renaissance), 2003-

 Updated November 16, 2009