Chapman University’s Italian Studies Program and the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research are pleased to announce that Dr. Corrado Confalonieri will join the faculty as the inaugural Bernardino Telesio Endowed Professor in Italian Studies. He holds doctoral degrees from Harvard University and the University of Padua and his research cuts across a wide chronological span of Italian culture. With his expertise and passion, Dr. Confalonieri will engage in multiple teaching and research collaborations leveraging Italian humanistic culture as an interface with other disciplines. Chapman’s Italian Studies faculty and students are eager to collaborate with Professor Confalonieri.
Below is a letter from Dr. Confalonieri to the program’s community.
“I’m enthusiastic about joining the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Chapman University this fall, and I look forward to meeting students and working together with the colleagues of the Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research! I have been living in Italy for the past three years, but I studied and worked on the East Coast for several years before. After receiving both my laurea triennale in Literature and my laurea specialistica in Modern Philology from the University of Parma, I pursued graduate studies in Italian Literature at the University of Padua. As a graduate student, I had the opportunity to spend a semester at Columbia University, New York, and I immediately felt that I wanted to come back and be part of the intellectual community of Italian Studies in the US. Right after obtaining my dottorato in Italy, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to start a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University which I completed in 2019. Subsequently, I taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University for one year and for another year I went back to Harvard as the Lauro De Bosis Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies. In the last three years, I worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Parma, in Italy.
As a scholar of the Italian Renaissance, I couldn’t be more excited about being the first holder of a professorship named after a 16th-century Italian philosopher, Bernardino Telesio. My research interests, however, include not only Renaissance topics – especially the Italian romance epics, and 16th-century Italian tragedy – but also 20th-century Italian poetry, comparative literature, and literary theory. I am the author of three books (most recently Torquato Tasso e il desiderio di unità. La “Gerusalemme liberata” e una nuova teoria dell’epica, and “Queste spaziose loggie”. Architettura e poetica nella tragedia italiana del Cinquecento, which both came out in 2022), and a number of articles on topics spanning from the Renaissance to contemporary Italian literature. I also co-edited an anthology of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s works, special issues of journals, and a multidisciplinary book on teaching. I am the Co-Editor-in-chief of «Parole rubate. Rivista internazionale di studi sulla citazione/Purloined Letters. An international journal of quotation studies» and I serve on the editorial board of «Between», the journal of the Italian Association for the Theory and Comparative History of Literature.
I have extensive experience in teaching both in the US and in Italy as well as in study abroad programs, and I look forward to starting to work with colleagues and students both on campus and in travel courses. I taught courses on a variety of topics (Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Renaissance in Florence, Soccer and popular culture, Italian romance epics, Elena Ferrante, Environmental Humanities among others) and across disciplines, and I am eager to expand my course offerings and to contribute to the interdisciplinary approach that inspires Chapman and the Ferrucci Institute.
Outside of work, I enjoy playing guitar, hiking, listening to podcasts while going for a walk, and especially spending time with my wife Giorgia – a teacher of Italian too – and our daughter Prisca, who grew up bilingual between Italy and New England. We’re all happy to be back to the US after three years and excited to live in Southern California. As newcomers to the area, my family and I look forward to meeting you all and to receiving suggestions on how to best explore OC!
A presto!
Corrado Confalonieri”
