Anna Bagorda got her Italian laurea in "Lettere Classiche" (Classical Studies) from the University of Lecce in 2002. She has just completed her third year of doctoral studies in Italian Studies and her main focus is Dante's Paradiso and medieval philosophy related to the representation of God.

Franco Baldasso was born in Treviso, Italy. He lived in Bologna for many years where he graduated in contemporary Italian literature from "Università degli Studi" and worked as a journalist and editor. He is a second year doctoral student beginning September 2007. He recently published his first book, titled Il cerchio di gesso. Primo Levi narratore e testimone (Bologna: Edizioni Pendragon, 2007).

Elena Bellina graduated in Foreign Languages and Literature from the University of Bergamo, Italy, and received her M.A. in English from Youngstown State University. She is currently working in on a Ph.D. in Italian Studies at NYU, where she is focusing on autobiographical writing. She has published on Angela Carter and on Elena Ferrante's literary works. She is editor, with Paola Bonifazio, of the proceedings of the conference State of Exception: Cultural Responses to the Rhetoric of Fear, held at NYU in April 2005 (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2006).

Bryan J. Brazeau began the graduate program at NYU in the fall of 2008. Prior to his arrival at NYU he graduated from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada with an Honours B.A. in Western Society and Culture, minoring in both Italian and Spanish literatures. During this time, he spent a summer in Oxford, UK at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. His undergraduate thesis focused on the effect sixteenth century translation theory had on the construction of Cervantes Don Quijote. His research interests include: the Renaissance chivalric epic (Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso) and its European reception, Early Modern notions of subjectivity and statehood, the reception of the late Italian Renaissance in Spain (specifically in the work of Cervantes), translation theory, Reformation and Counter-Reformation negotiations between classical and Christian cultural legacies, art history and the configurations and definitions of "Modernity".

Valeria G. Castelli is a second-year doctoral student in Italian Studies at NYU. She has a laurea in Lettere Moderne (with a specialization in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature) from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano and an M.A. in Italian Studies from the University College of London. Her interests include Fascist and Post-War literature and culture, 20th century Italian poetry, cultural studies and literary theory. Valeria has worked in the study abroad sector as academic advisor prior to her graduate studies.

Sara E. Diaz has earned both her B.A. and M.A. from NYU and is currently at work completing her Ph.D. in Italian Literature. Her research interests focus on the representation of erotic and conjugal love in medieval and Early Modern art and literature, while her dissertation specifically explores the polysemous theme of marriage in Dante’s Divine Comedy. She has published on Giacomino da Verona, Salimbene da Parma, Agnolo Firenzuola, Cassandra Fedele and Gaspara Stampa.

Andrea Di Camillo graduated from New York University with a B.A. in Italian Studies and is currently working towards the completion of her M.A. She graduated Summa Cum Laude and completed her undergraduate honors thesis focusing on the presentation of religiosity in three of Federico Fellini's films after the Italian economic miracle of the 1950's. She received the Italian Cultural Institute Award for excellence in Italian Studies and was nominated to Phi Beta Kappa in her senior year. Some of her research interests include cultural studies in modern Italy, and Italian cinema of the post-war era.  She is currently working for i-Italy as a journalist and research correspondent.

Jessica Goethals Jessica Goethals came to NYU after receiving her BA in Italian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University. She recently spent a year at NYU's Villa La Pietra in Florence, where she completed her master's thesis on Michelangelo's late-life religious poetry. She is currently working on her dissertation on literary representations of the 1527 Sack of Rome and its aftermath. Her areas of interest include fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italian literature and intellectual history, prophecy and apocalypticism, the intersection between Spanish and Italian literature, and the twentieth-century novel. She is also co-editor, with Valerie McGuire and Gaoheng Zhang, of the proceedings of the 2006 NYU graduate conference, "Power and Image in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).

Lindsay Eufusia is a PhD student in the Department of Italian Studies. Her research interests include modern Italian literature, film, and culture, the fascist period, issues of gender and identity, considerations of the nation, nationality, and the family, and performativity and performance theory. She received her BA in Italian from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked as an editor in educational publishing prior to joining the graduate program at NYU. In 2007 she was a recipient of an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the College of Arts and Science for her performance as an instructor of Italian at NYU.

Valerie McGuire received a B.A. in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She currently researches Italian Modernism, proto-Fascism and Colonialism using memoirs, travel and war diaries. She is two time recipient of a FLAS for Modern Greek for a specialization in the Italian occupation of Greece in the Dodecanese.Currently she is writing and researching at NYU Villa La Pietra, Florence. She is also co-editor, with Jessica Goethals and Gaoheng Zhang, of the proceedings of the 2006 NYU graduate conference, "Power and Image in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).

Shannon McHugh is a first year Ph.D. student who earned her B.A. in Italian from the University of Southern California.  Her interests include early modern women’s writing, feminist theory, and issues of translation.

Alessandra Montalbano graduated in philosophy from the Università degli Studi of Verona with a thesis entitled "Italo Calvino: una filosofia dell'immagine." She received her M.A in Italian Studies from New York University with a thesis on Pasolini’s Petrolio. She has published an article on Livio Romano and Pier Vittorio Tondelli in the Italian literary review L'immaginazione and an article entitled "Pier Paolo Pasolini e Maurice Merleau-Ponty allo specchio: Una lettura di Petrolio" in Pier Paolo Pasolini in Living Memory (2009). Her current work focuses on kidnapping in Italy from 1970-2000.

David Lee Morea recently graduated with honors from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with a B.F.A in Film Production and is now pursuing his M.A at NYU in Florence where he plans on studying the Italian film industry. He is a dog person.

Jonathan Mullins is a third year Ph.D. student with an A.B. in comparative literature from Dartmouth. His primary areas of research are post-1968 political philosophy, radical labor movements, queer theory and visual culture. He also works on conceptions of friendship and epistolary practice in early modern Italy.

Jennifer Newman is working towards a Ph.D. in Italian Literature with a focus on Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Her research interests include Dante, Machiavelli, and Renaissance court culture and literature, particularly Baldassare Castiglione's Il libro del Cortegiano. She received bachelor's degrees in both Italian and French language and literature from Arizona State University.

Joseph Perna is a third year Ph.D. student, and comes to NYU with a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago. His interests lie primarily in the modern period and include visual culture, film studies, issues of sex/gender, and literary theory.

Laura Perna's adventures at the University of Texas in Austin led her to New York for a year, and then Florence for another, working toward an MA in contemporary Italian literature.

Inga Pierson received her B.A. in Italian Literature from Boston College and her M.A. from New York Univeristy in Italian Studies with a thesis on Dante's nautical metaphors.  In her doctoral research, she focuses on Italian cinema and modern and contemporary Italian culture.  Her dissertation, recently defended with distinction, explores neorealist cinema as a tragic discourse.  While contextualizing a few iconic films within the 'emotional atmosphere' of postwar Italy, she makes unprecedented comparisons to French poetic realism, 19th century Italian literature and painting and American Depression-era filmmaking.  Other interests include classics and aesthetic theory, art history, Italian theater and medieval studies.  She is currently at work on several articles taken from her thesis.

Beatrice Sica received her "laurea" in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature from the University of Pisa. In Pisa she also obtained the "diploma" of the Scuola Normale Superiore. She has published various articles in particular on twentieth century Italian literature. She is the editor of Ruggero Jacobbi, L’Italia simbolista, foreward by Anna Dolfi (Trento: La Finestra, 2003) and Ruggero Jacobbi e la Francia. Poesie e traduzioni, foreward by Andrea Camilleri (Firenze: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2004). She is also the author of Poesia surrealista italiana (Genova: San Marco Dei Giustiniani, 2007). Beatrice is currently working on her PhD dissertation entitled " 'Magical Italy:' The Italian Fantastic, French Surrealism, and the Debate over Italian National Identity in the Fascist Period."

Marco Scalvini Prior to joining NYU, Marco was active in the field of mediation and conflict resolution. He took part in numerous efforts by the international community to promote political dialogue, national reconciliation, and democratization in Kosovo and in Palestine. This background has inspired his Ph.D. project on Islamophobia, which focuses on rules and mechanisms behind the misrepresentation of Muslims in the media and how these affect the legislative and political decision-making process. Marco has published "What's wrong with Muslims? Screening conflict and identity within France and Britain's suburbs" in Framing Globalization: Visual Perspectives. He has also taught and lectured at Politecnico of Milan and Université de Montréal. Since 2008, he has been working as an advisor for the G8 Summit. Recently, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Trento. In  2009/2010, he will be hosted at the Ph.D. program of Media and Communications at LSE (London School of Economics and Politics). His website is scalvini.eu

Gabrielle Sims came to NYU after graduating from the University of Western Australia in 2001 with a BA in English literature and Italian studies.  She completed her MA with a thesis on Brunetto Latini's Ciceronian poetic theory, partially completed during a year at NYU's Villa La Pietra in Florence.  She is currently working on a dissertation on the naturalist sublime in the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi. Her interests include Italian poetic theory from the medieval to Modernist period, the natural sciences and literature, and European Romanticisms.

Melissa Swain is currently interested in everything yet harbors hope of one day completing a dissertation.  She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a B.A. in Italian Studies and Art History. She then received a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Art Conservation from SACI, Florence, focusing on the production, meaning, and conservation of Tuscan wedding cassoni. Prior to joining the graduate program at NYU she worked as an art restorer and conservation technician in Florence, Italy and New Orleans, Louisiana.

Paola Ugolini comes to NYU with a Laurea in Lettere Moderne from the University of Bologna and a MA in Teaching Methodologies of Italian as a Foreign Language from the University of Venice. Her research interests include sixteenth-century literature and court culture, twentieth-century Italian poetry, and second language acquisition. She is currently working on her dissertation project which focuses on the anti-court tradition in early modern Italy.

Paola Ureni received her Laurea in Italian Literature from the University of Florence, with a thesis on the work of Federigo Tozzi and its relationship with the French scientific culture of the time. As a doctoral student, she has been working both on medieval and contemporary Italian literature and philosophy. Her main area of interest and research is medieval philosophy and poetry, but she investigates also twentieth-century Italian literature. She is currently writing her dissertation, which focuses on the Augustinian concept of intellectual memory and its trace in Dante’s poetry. She has published several articles, mainly in the review “Studi danteschi”, exploring the relationship between Dante’s Divine Comedy and medieval medical science as well as theology. She has also published articles on the work of Italian writers of the twentieth century, such as Federigo Tozzi and Pier Vittorio Tondelli.

Alberto Zambenedetti was born and raised in Venice, Italy. He has a Laurea in Foreign Languages and Literatures from Università degli Studi di Venezia, Ca' Foscari, a Master's degree in Cinema Studies from New York University, and he is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Italian Studies from the same institution. He is a cat person.

Gaoheng Zhang was born in Hangzhou, China, in the Year of Monkey. He holds a B.A. in Italian and International Business from Beijing Foreign Studies University (“Bei Wai”) and a M.A. from NYU with a thesis on theater architecture and rhetoric in the late Renaissance. His areas of research are rhetoric, theories of Italian art and architecture since the Renaissance, Italian cinema, European modernist culture, cultural geography, border studies, and gender studies. His dissertation addresses the dynamics of border crossing and masculinity in the films of Gianni Amelio. He is also co-editor, with Jessica Goethals and Valerie McGuire, of the proceedings of the 2006 NYU graduate conference, "Power and Image in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).

Kimberly Ziegler began the graduate program at NYU in the fall of 2008. Prior to NYU, she received a B.A. in Philosophy and Modern Languages and Literatures from Kenyon College and also spent one year in Naples as a Fulbright scholar. Her project in Naples studied the “La Scuola adotta un monumento” project that seeks to teach students civic responsibility by engaging them in the artistic heritage of the city. Her interests include 20th century literature and cultural studies, especially related to southern Italy.