The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute

Virginia Jewiss is the Director of Public Engagement at the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute and a Teaching Professor in the Humanities.

She joined Hopkins from Yale, where she served for many years as Assistant to the Director of the Whitney Humanities Center. A medievalist with extensive experience both within and beyond academia, she practices the humanistic teaching and scholarship that is central to AGHI’s mission. She designed and directed the Yale Humanities in Rome program, crafted numerous innovative, interdisciplinary courses, helped launch the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities, and was a core faculty member for Directed Studies, Yale’s great books program. A noted translator, she helped launch the Cecile and Theodore Margellos World Republic of Letters at Yale University Press and continues to serve on the advisory board. Her own translations include Dante’s Vita Nuova, Luigi Pirandello’s short stories, Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah, and Melania Mazzucco’s Vita. A longtime resident of Rome, she has collaborated with Italian directors Paolo Sorrentino and Matteo Garrone, adapting their screenplays in English for filming. Jewiss, who earned her Ph.D. in Italian at Yale, has also taught at Dartmouth College and Trinity College/Rome.

• “Hell for Kids: Translating Dante’s Divine Comedy for Children” in Translation, Right or Wrong, editors Susana Bayó Belenguer, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Cormac      Ó Cuilleanáin, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013, 78-90
• “Piccarda’s Peace in a German War Cemetery,” MLN: Modern Language Notes, 2012: S119-29
• “Preface” to Notturno by Gabriele D’Annunzio, translated by Stephen Sartarelli. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011
• Il viaggio di Dante, un’avventura infernale and Dante’s Journey, An Infernal Adventure, an illustrated version of Dante’s Inferno for children. Florence: Mandragora, 2008
• Entries for The Dante Encyclopedia: Circe, Clio, Constance, Cunizza da Romano, Electra, Exodus, Iphigenia, Iris, The Lustful, and Myrrha, editor Richard Lansing. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc, 2000
• “Monstrous Movements and Metaphors in Dante’s Divine Comedy.” In Forum Italicum, (Fall 1998): 332-46. Reprinted in Literary Monsters: The Italian Tradition, editor Keala Jewell. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001, 179-90
• “Objects of War and Materiality in the Orlando Furioso.” Medievalia et Humanistica (No. 26, 1999): 33-44
• Review: Henry Ansgar Kelly, Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante. Romance Philology (vol. XLVII No. 2, November 1993): 259-61
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• Vita Nuova, by Dante Alighieri, Penguin Classics, 2022
• Stories for the Years, by Luigi Pirandello, Yale University Press, 2020 (longlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Prose)
• ZeroZeroZero, by Roberto Saviano. New York: Penguin, July 2015
• Limbo, by Melania Mazzucco. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014
• King Lear, by Melania Mazzucco. San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2014
• “Imaginary Kingdoms,” by Clara Sereni, excerpt. The Posen Anthology of Jewish Civilization and Culture, (volume 10) Yale University Press, 2012
• The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano: revised and edited the British translation (by Shaun Whiteside) for Viking Press, 2010
• Cagliari, short stories by Nicola Lecca, Marcello Fois, and Alberto Capitta, T Hotel,        2009
• “Naples, ’04,” by Roberto Saviano. Granta (No. 99, 2007): 169-190
•  Gomorrah, by Roberto Saviano. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
• “A Mysterious Letter, a Sailor, a Young Woman, a Thirteen-Year-Old Cabin Boy, and the Author of Vita,” by Melania G. Mazzucco. In Letterature, editor Maria Ida Gaeta. Rome: Festival Internazionale di Roma, 2004. Reprinted in www.wordswithoutborders.org and Columbia: a Journal of Literature and Art, (No. 43, 2006): 192-206
•  Vita, by Melania G. Mazzucco. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
• “The Writer,” by Melania G. Mazzucco. In Sul Reale. Lo Scrittore e altre opere di Giancarlo Neri, Milano: Johan and Levi, 2005
• Selections from Strega Prize-winning novels by Enzo Siciliano, Domenico Starnone, and Melania G. Mazzucco, in Strega @ Yale, a Yale publication, 2003
• Grouchismi, Storie breve 1925-1973 by Groucho Marx. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2000
• L’amore nei giorni della rabbia by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1999

• E’ stata la mano di Dio, Screenplay by Paolo Sorrentino, 2021 (Grand Jury Prize, Venice Film Festival; Italy’s selection for Best Foreign Film at the 2022 Academy Awards)
• America Latina, Screenplay by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, 2021
• Homemade, Screenplay by Paolo Sorrentino, 2020
• The New Pope, Screenplays by Paolo Sorrentino, HBO series, 2020
• The Young Pope, Screenplay by Paolo Sorrentino, HBO series, 2017
• Killer in Red, Screenplay by Paolo Sorrentino, 2017
• Tale of Tales, Screenplay by Matteo Garrone, Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti, and Massimo Gaudioso, 2015
•  Youth, Screenplay by Paolo Sorrentino, 2015
• Siberian Education, Screenplay by Gabriele Salvatores, Stefano Rulli, and Sandro Petraglia, 2013
•  Reality, Screenplay by Matteo Garrone, Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, and Massimo Gaudioso. English subtitles, 2012 (Grand Prix Award, Cannes Film Festival)
• Twice Born, Screenplay by Margaret Mazzantini and Sergio Castellitto, 2012
• This Must Be the Place. Screenplay by Paolo Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello, 2011
• https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5691500/