NEW! Check out the course offerings for the Spring 2003 semester!

The interdisciplinary program in Italian Studies at Brown University offers students the opportunity to study the language, history and culture of Italy under the guidance of internationally renowned scholars in Anthropology, History, History of Art, Literature and Media.

Graduate Faculty includes:

Dedda De Angelis, Senior Lecturer.
Areas of Research and Teaching: Curriculum Design and Foreign Language Teacher Education.
Recent publications: Scenario italiano, Napoli:Liguori, 2002 (co-authored with Anna Maria Di Martino).

David I. Kertzer, Dupee University Professor of Social Science, Professor of Anthropology and Italian Studies.
Areas of Research and Teaching: Modern Italian History; Church and politics in Italy; Symbolic Bases of Politics; Family and Social History; Anthropology and History.
Recent publications: The Popes against the Jews, New York: Knopf, 2001 (Paperback published by Vintage, 2002; Italian edition: I papi contro gli ebrei, Milano: RIzzoli, 2002); The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, New York: Knopf, 1997 (Paperback published by Vintage, 1998; Italian edition: Prigioniero del Papa Re, Milano: Rizzoli, 1996); Politics and Symbols: The Italian Communist Party and the Fall of Communism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Evelyn Lincoln, Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Italian Studies.
Areas of Research and Teaching: History of Italian Renaissance Art, Early Modern Printing and Printmaking, Histories of Gender and Science, Mannerism, Italian Renaissance Courts, The Art of Southern Italy.
Recent Publications: "Models for Science and Craft: Isabella Parasole's Botanical and Lace Illustrations", Visual Resources XVII (Winter, 2001) pp. 1-35; "Curating the Renaissance Body", Word and Image 17: 1&2 (Jan.-June 2001), 42-61; The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Printmaker, London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Recent Exhibitions (curator): "The Object of Ornament, European Design 1470-1800" at the RISD Museum, and "Crafting the Medici", at the Bell Gallery of Brown University.

Ronald Martinez, Professor of Italian Studies.
Areas of Research and Teaching: Dante studies; Early Modern Narrative, Theater, and Lyric; Dialect literature.
Recent publications: "Tragic Machiavelli," in: The comedy and tragedy of Machiavelli : essays on the literary works, ed. by Vickie B. Sullivan, New York and London: Yale University Press, 2000, 102-119; introduction, commentary and interpretive essays to Dante Alighieri, Inferno, edited and translated by Robert M. Durling, Oxford and New York: Oxford Un. Press, 1996 (now in its third printing, forthcoming are Purgatorio and Paradiso).

Massimo Riva, Professor and Chair of Italian Studies.
Areas of Research and Teaching: Humanities Computing; Narrative Models (from Boccaccio to Calvino); Early Modern Thought (from Pico to Vico); National Identity in Literature; Film Studies.
Recent Publications: Malinconie del moderno: critica dell'incivilimento e disagio della nazionalità nella letteratura italiana del 19. secolo, Ravenna: Longo, 2001; "The Awakening of Reason engenders Monsters," in: Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination, ed. by Keala Jewell, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001, 279-296; "The Decameron Web: Teaching a Classic as Hypertext at Brown University," in: Approaches to teaching Boccaccio's Decameron, ed. by James H. McGregor, New York: Modern Language Association, 2000, 172-182.

Thanks to the Exchange Program between Brown University and the University of Bologna, our regular graduate faculty is consistently supplemented by the addition of distinguished Visiting Professors from the University of Bologna. In recent years, we have also invited to teach at Brown the novelists Gianni Celati and Ginevra Bompiani.

Major international scholarly resources for the study of Italian culture are currently produced by Brown faculty and their students, including:

• The interdisciplinary Journal of Modern Italian Studies, edited by David Kertzer and John Davis (University of Connecticut)
• Online projects, based on international collaborations and recent winners of several awards, including major NEH grants:
• 1427 Florentine Catasto Project and Tratte database, based on the work of the late David Herlihy and edited by Burr Litchfield (History, Brown) and Anthony Molho (European Institute in Florence)
• The Decameron Web, edited by Massimo Riva and Michael Papio (College of the Holy Cross)
• The Pico della Mirandola Project, coordinated by Massimo Riva, Michael Papio and Pier Cesare Bori (University of Bologna)
• The Electronic Archive of the Dante journal Lectura Dantis, edited by Michael Papio.

These projects, combined with the excellent holdings in the area of Italian Studies at both University Libraries and the John Carter Brown Library provide a unique combination of assets for the interdisciplinary study and teaching of Italian culture at our university.

Financial Support for Graduate Students:

Students are regularly offered 4 years of support, through a combination of University and Departmental Fellowships and Teaching Assistantships.

Preference will be given to students with a 4-5 year Italian Laurea or and American Master of Arts.

Typical Curriculum:

Year 1 (Fellowship)
6 elective courses + Research workshop (a year-long faculty-students colloquium on special issues in interdisciplinary Italian studies)
Required courses: Theory and Methods of Foreign Language Teaching; Theory and Methods of Italian Studies. n

Year 2 (Teaching Assistantship)
2 courses + Independent Research Project, leading to
Preliminary Examination

Year 3 (Teaching Assistantship)
Dissertation proposal approved (by the end of sem.I)

Year 4 (Dissertation Fellowship)
Dissertation research
Additional language (through coursework or examination)

Find the Graduate School applications for admission here.