Massimo Riva
Professor of Italian Studies
Director of Graduate Studies
Director, Virtual Humanities Lab
Office: 190 Hope St., Rm 202
Phone: (Italian Studies): +1.401.863-3984
Massimo_Riva@Brown.edu
Courses Fall 2009
ITAL1030A - Realism and Utopia in Italian Cinema
ITAL1340 - Garibaldi and the Risorgimento
ITAL2820 - Italian Studies Colloquium
Biography
Ph. D. Rutgers University (1986)
M.A. (Laurea quinquennale) University of Florence, Italy (1981) summa cum laude
Interests
18th-century literature, romanticism, literary maladies, nationalism in literature, modernism in literature and film, contemporary narrative forms, digital humanities.
Accomplishments
M. Riva has taught at the University of Sydney (Australia), Northwestern U., and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; he has been a visiting professor at the University of Bologna, the IULM of Milan, the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris, France) and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (Mexico City) among other institutions. He has authored three books: Saturno e le Grazie. Ipocondriaci e malinconici nella cultura italiana del Settecento (Sellerio, 1992), Malinconie del Moderno. Disagio della nazionalità e critica dell’incivilimento nella letteratura italiana dell’Ottocento (Longo, 2001, electronic version is available at: Casalini Libri Digital Division), and Il futuro della letteratura. L’opera d’arte letteraria nell’epoca della sua riproducibilità digitale (Bompiani, forthcoming, 2010). He is the editor of Italian Tales. An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Fiction (Yale, 2004; paperback ed., 2007), and the co-editor of a forthcoming collection of essays, Renato Poggioli: An Intellectual Life (Olschki, 2010). M. Riva's engagement with information technology in both teaching and research has led to the creation of several award winning online projects, such as The Decameron Web, supported by two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1999-2002). Most recently, he and his collaborators were awarded a NEH grant for the creation of a Virtual Humanities Lab (2004-06). He is the coordinator of the international Pico della Mirandola and Garibaldi & the Risorgimento projects.
