Erminia Ardissino
(Ph.D., Yale University; Dottorato di Ricerca, Università Cattolica, Milano) is associate professor at the University of Torino. Her research deals with Italian literature, with special attention to the relationship with history of ideas and religious experience. She has published several books on Dante, Renaissance, and Baroque Italian literature, and articles in the main journals of philology and literary studies. She has also edited critical editions of early Italian texts. Currently she is exploring reading and writing by women in Early Modern Italy (Donne interpreti della Bibbia nell’Italia della prima età moderna. Riscritture e comunità ermeneutiche, Brepols, 2020). She has received numerous awards, including the Renaissance Society of America Fellowship, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University Fellowship, and the Fulbright Distinguished Lectureship at the University of Chicago.
Alvaro Cacciotti
was awarded a doctorate in Dogmatic Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1988 and currently teaches Spiritual Dogmatic Theology at the Pontifical Antonianum University and the Pontifical Lateranensis University. He was Director of the School of Medieval and Franciscan Studies of the Pontifical Antonianum University (1993–2005) and Dean of the School of Theology at the same university (2014–2017). He taught in several institutions: The School of Theology in Naples, the Theological Institute in Assisi, and the Teresianum School of Theology in Rome. He is a member of the Executive Board of the International Society of Franciscan Studies, editor of the journal Frate Francesco, director of the Cultural Center Aracoeli of the Friars Minor, editor of the series Biblioteca di Frate Francesco, member of the editing board of the journal Studies in Spirituality in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His research interests are the relationships between Theology and Spirituality (XIII–XIV centuries), with particular emphasis on the production by Franciscan authors. His publications focus on mystical literature and Iacopone da Todi in particular.
Nicolò Crisafi
is Research and Teaching Fellow in Italian and Director of Studies of Modern Languages at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. He researches medieval Italian literature with a special focus on Dante and has published on narrative theory, the role of the reader(s), affect, and gender performance. He is the author of Dante’s Masterplot and Alternative Narratives in the ‘Commedia’
Anne-Gaëlle Cuif
Ph.D. in Medieval and Renaissance Literature and History (Italian Studies), She has worked on the notions of ‘dolcezza’ and ‘soavità’ as a therapeutic and soteriological emotion in the works of Dante Alighieri. Her thesis was defended at the University of Turin and University of Tours. Her current research focuses on the conception of aesthetic and spiritual emotions in religious and secular literature of the XIII–XVI centuries in France and Italy, in particular on the modes of expression and interpretation linked to poetic writing and musical performance, in their functions of “medicine of the soul”. As a musician, she plays the gothic and ancient harp with international performances and teaching activities. She actually teaches Latin and Medieval Art and Literature at the University of Lorraine.
Federica Franzè
received her Laurea in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Urbino. She has a Master’s degree in Italian literature and a Ph.D. in German literature from Rutgers University, where she has taught both languages. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Italian at Columbia University and one of the Directors of the language program. Her research interests include transnational literature, cinema and literature of migration, foreign language pedagogy, and teaching with technology. She has published extensively material for Italian language teachers. She is actively engaged in refugees and immigrant issues and in 2021 she earned a Master’s degree in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies from the University of London, and is volunteering for different integration projects for refugees in Italy and the US.
Alexander J.B. Hampton
is an Assistant Professor in the Religion Department at the University of Toronto, specializing in metaphysics, poetics, and nature. His publications include Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion (Cambridge 2019), Christian Platonism: A History (ed.) (Cambridge, 2021), and the Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment (Cambridge, 2022). He contributed the chapter on poetics and mysticism to The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology (2020).
Magdalena Maria Kubas
After obtaining a Master’s Degree in Italian Philology (Jagiellonian University in Cracow), She received her Ph.D. in Italian Literature, Philology and History
Matteo Leonardi
after having taught at the universities of Bern and Aosta, is now a contract professor of Italian literature at the University of Turin. His studies focused primarily on medieval literature: from laudes to the Franciscan tradition, from mystical literature to Dante Alighieri and Boccaccio. His monographs include the first complete and annotated edition of the Laude by Iacopone da Todi (Olschki, 2010), the Bibliografia iacoponica (Sismel, 2010), the Libro delle Tre Scritture by Bonvesin da la Riva (Longo, 2014) and the Storia della lauda. Secoli XIII–XVI (Brepols, 2021). In the field of modern literature he devoted himself to the study of the novella between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular attention to Giovanni Verga and Luigi Pirandello.
Brian K. Reynolds
teaches in the Italian Department and the Graduate Institute of Comparative Literature of Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, specialising in Medieval Italian Literature and in Mariology, and is also a member of the adjunct faculty at the Sophia University Institute, Florence. He received his primary degree from University College Dublin in Italian and history and went on to carry out his postgraduate studies at both UCD and Trinity College Dublin. He also lectured in both of these institutions and in the Università degli Studi, Bari prior to moving to Taiwan. Reynolds has written and spoken widely on Dante Alighieri and on Italian courtly and religious literature of the Middle Ages. At present he is mid-way through a project to produce a hypertext that illustrates the Marian and incarnational intra- and intertextuality of the Divine Comedy. Reynolds is also a recognised expert on Patristic and Medieval Mariology He is currently completing the second volume of his Gateway to Heaven series, on Marian
Oana Sălișteanu
is a professor of Italian Linguistics at Bucharest University where since 1990 she has been teaching Italian morphosyntax, dialectology, paremiology and phraseology and specialized terminology. Interests also in etymology and translation studies. Four volumes as a unique author, two Romanian Academy awards (1991, 2006) for her contributions in collective volumes about Italian dialects and Italian borrowings from Latin, tens of participations with scientific papers to international conferences. Member of Société de Linguistique Romane, Associazione di Fraseologia e Paremiologia Phrasis, Union of Romanians’ Writers (translators’ section). Translations into Romanian: fiction (Gabriele D’Annunzio, Giampaolo Rugarli, Luciano De Crescenzo, Fausto Brizzi, Luca D’Andrea), aesthetics and essays (five treaties by Umberto Eco) and 13th century Italian poetry in rhymed translations (Iacopone da Todi’s Laude and Guido Cavalcanti’s Rime).
Samia Tawwab
completed her M.A. & Ph.D. in Italian Studies, at the University of Toronto, with a doctorate dissertation on medieval religious drama, and particularly the performance of liturgical drama in Iacopone da Todi’s laude. Samia has taught undergraduate courses in Italian language, linguistics, and literature as a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto from 2006–2018. In 2018, Samia has completed MEd at York University, focusing her research on the teaching & learning of language and culture at the post-secondary level. Her research interests include internationalizing and adapting curricula to students with no background in Italian. Samia has been teaching at York University since 2016 and is currently a Sessional Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Italian Studies Program, at the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, at York University, in Toronto, Canada.
Alessandro Vettori
is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where he currently serves as Chair of the Department of Italian. His most recent monograph is Dante’s Prayerful Pilgrimage: Typologies of Prayer in Dante’s Comedy (Brill, 2019, Italian translation Edizioni Storia e Letteratura,
Carlo Zacchetti
holds a Bachelor Degree in Lettere Moderne from the Università degli Studi di Milano (IT), with a thesis on Mario Luzi’s Nel magma, a Master of Arts in Lingua, Letteratura e Civiltà Italiana from the Istituto di Studi Italiani at Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano (CH), with a thesis on Petrarch’s Canzoniere. After several stays abroad (Paris and Geneva), where he worked in the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes in Paris with Prof. Dominque Poirel, he discussed a Ph.D thesis at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (IT), on January 2022. The thesis (La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura francescana dell’Italia medievale [XIII–XIV secolo]) was awarded the Premio Paul Sabatier. XI edizione from the Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani and is currently ahead of publication. In January 2019, he organized, in collaboration with Prof. Corrado Bologna, an International Conference at the SNS, whose Acts have been published in 2022 (La scuola di San Vittore e la letteratura medievale).
Estelle Zunino
is associate professor at Lyon, University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, and member of the pluridisciplinary joint research unit IRHIM, Institut d’Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités. Her research focuses mainly on the Italian medieval literature. She has published papers on Iacopone da Todi, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca as well as a monograph about Iacopone da Todi, Conquêtes littéraires et quête spirituelle (PUPS, 2013). She has also co-directed and introduced a volume of essays about Italian literature (of Middle Age and Renaissance) Herméneutique et commentaire (2019) and another about Nostalgia, Nostalgie, conceptualisation d’une émotion (PUN, 2021).