Arielle Saiber

Arielle Saiber (she/her/hers)

Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies, Head of the Italian Subdivision

Contact Information

Research Interests: Dante, Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Humanism, Early Print History, History of Science and Mathematics, Science Fiction, Mysticism, Psychedelic Studies

Education: PhD, Yale University

Modern Languages and Literatures > People > Arielle Saiber

Arielle Saiber is Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. 

Saiber's books include Images of Quattrocento Florence: Writings on Literature, History and Art co-edited with Stefano U. Baldassarri (Yale, 2000); Giordano Bruno and the Geometry of Language (Ashgate/Routledge, 2005); and Measured Words: Computation and Writing in Renaissance Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2017).

Saiber publishes primarily on Dante, on the intersections between premodern Italian literature and mathematics/science, and visual interpretations of Dante’s Commedia.  She has also published on early print history, science fiction, and experimental electronic music.  Her current research is on “altered states of consciousness” in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature.

She has co-edited a number of special issues of academic journals: for Configurations, “Mathematics and the Imagination” (2009) with Henry S. Turner; for Dante Studies, “Longfellow and Dante” (2010) with Giuseppe Mazzotta; for California Italian Studies, “Sound” (2014) with Deanna Shemek; and for Science Fiction Studies, “Italian Science Fiction” (2015) with Salvatore Proietti and Umberto Rossi.  She is currently co-editing with Proietti an anthology of Italian science fiction in English for Wesleyan University Press's Early Classics of Science Fiction series.

Her doctoral dissertation on Giordano Bruno won Yale’s Field Prize (2000), and in 2004 she received the Karofsky Prize for teaching at Bowdoin.  She has been a fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples, Italy (1998-1999), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2003-2004), and Villa I Tatti - Harvard’s Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy (2008-2009).  She also received an NEH Fellowship (2008-2009), the MLA's Scaglione Publication Award (2016), the Newberry Library's Weiss-Brown Publication Award (2017), the American Initiative for Italian Culture's Bridge Book Award (2018), and the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts' Kendrick Book Prize (2019) for her book Measured Words. 

In 2006 she built the web-based archive, Dante Today: Sightings and Citings of Dante’s Work in Contemporary Culture, which she now co-edits with Beth Coggeshall.

She co-edits the new book series Proximities: Experiments in Nearness with David Cecchetto for the University of Minnesota Press.

Research Interests

  • Dante
  • Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and philosophy
  • History of mathematics
  • Early print history
  • Science fiction
  • Nonhuman Studies
  • Electronic music
  • Esoteric studies

 

Teaching Areas

  • Dante
  • Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature
  • Literature & Science
  • Science Fiction

Books and Edited Volumes

Articles and Essays

Works in Progress

  • anthology: Fantascienza: An Anthology of Italian Science Fiction from the 1860s-1960s, ed. with S. Proietti.

Non-Academic Writing

Book Reviews

  • Martin McLaughlin. Leon Battista Alberti: la vita, l’umanesimo, le opere letterarie (Florence: Olschki, 2018) for Modern Language Review 113.2 (2018): 414-416.
  • Paolo d’Alessandro and Pier Daniele Napolitani, ed. Archimede Latino. Iacopo da San Cassiano e il Corpus archimedeo alla metà del quattrocento, con edizione della Circuli Dimensio e della Quadratura Parabolae.  Tr. P. d’Alessandro and P. D. Napolitani (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012) for Renaissance Quarterly 67.3 (2014).
  • Simonetta Bassi, ed., Bruno nel XXI secolo. Interpretazioni e ricerche. Atti delle giornate di Studio (Pisa, 15-16 ottobre 2009), with a bibliography of Bruno studies from 2001-2010 by Maria Elena Severini (Florence: Olschki, 2012) for Medium Aevum 82.2 (2013): 376.
  • Anna Laura Puliafito Bleuel, Comica pazzia: Vicissitudine e destini umani nel Candelaio di Giordano Bruno (Florence: Olschki, 2007) for Renaissance Quarterly 62 (Spring 2009): 207-209.
  • Eugenio Canone and Ingrid Rowland, ed. The Alchemy of Extremes: The Laboratory ofThe Eroici Furori of Giordano Bruno (Pisa-Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2007) for The Medieval Review. (2008)
  • Leo Catana, The Concept of Contraction in Giordano Bruno’s Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing 2005) for Renaissance Quarterly 59.3 (2006): 833-834.
  • Pierpaolo Antonello and Simon Gilson, ed., Science and Literature in Italian Culture: A Festschrift for Pat Boyde (Oxford: Legenda, 2005) for Italian Studies 60.2 (2005): 255-257.
  • Louis Van Delft, Frammento e anatomia: Rivoluzione scientifica e creazione letteraria(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004) for Renaissance Quarterly 58.3 (2005): 990-992.
  • Simon Gilson, Medieval Optics and Theories of Light in the Works of Dante (NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2000) and Alison Cornish, Reading Dante’s Stars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) for Italian Culture 20.1-2 (2002): 222-225.

Encyclopedia Entries and Bibliographies 

Translations

  • De Matteo, Giovanni. The Connectivist Manifesto. Tr. Arielle Saiber and Salvatore Proietti, 2013.
  • 40 documents co-translated with S. Baldassari for Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History, and Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
  • Ordine, Nuccio. Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the Ass (1987). Tr. Henryk Baranski and Arielle Saiber (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
  • The diaries of architect Paolo Soleri (1919-2013), 1994 (for the Cosanti Foundation).

Web Projects

Invited Lectures

  • “Three Contemporary Artists Illuminating Dantean Paths Through Difficult Times.” Georgetown University. (Nov. 2023)
  • “Three Contemporary Artists Illuminating Dantean Paths Through Difficult Times.” University of Arkansas (Oct. 2023)
  • Panel discussion on Kat Mustatea’s Voidopolis (MIT Press, 2023) at Photo Fairs New York, International Center of Photography, NY, NY (Sept. 2023)
  • “Che va di notte che porta il lume indietro: Tre artisti contemporanei fanno luce su percorsi danteschi attraverso tempi difficili.” University of Tokyo, Japan. (June 2023)
  • “Three Contemporary Artists Illuminating Dantean Paths Through Difficult Times.” Princeton University. (May 2023)
  • “Festina Lente: Remarks in Honor of Giuseppe Mazzotta.” Yale University. (Oct. 2022)
  • “Quieting the Human in Premodern Italy.” Johns Hopkins University. (Feb. 2022)
  • “Paul Laffoley’s Visions and Revisions of Dante’s Journey.” James Fuentes Gallery. NY, NY. (Dec. 2021)
  • “A Dante Museum Orbiting the Sun: Paul Laffoley’s Dantesphere Project (1978).” University of Notre Dame. (Nov. 2021)
  • Keynote: ‘Che va di notte che porta il lume indietro’: Three Contemporary Artists Illuminating Dantean Paths Through Difficult Times: Maru Ceballos (Buenos Aires), Kat Mustatea (NYC), Kazumasa Chiba (Tokyo). American Association of Italian Studies. (June 2021) (recording here: please note, some images are graphic in nature and not for young audiences)
  • “Dante and his Publics.” With Deborah Parker. Tra liti sì lontani. Dante for the Americas. Dante Society of American and Harvard University. (May 2021)
  • ” ‘…I must scream.’ Dante and American Science Fiction.” New York University. (April 2021) 
  • Keynote: ” ‘Adrenaline Pulses in the Cables of Reality’: The Technohumanist imaginatio of Italian Science Fiction’s Connettivist Movement.”GSAIS Conference: Memory and Imagination. University of Toronto. (March 2021)
  • “Dante Today.” Center for the Humanities at Temple University. (March 2021)
  • “Dante and American Science Fiction.” Georgetown University. (March 2021)
  • Keynote: “Circles in the Sky: Round Meteorologial Phenomena in Dante’s Paradiso.” Dante, Somma luce. Dante Society of America. Washington University, St. Louis. (Sept. 2020)
  • “Dante as Poet and Philosopher” with Jason Aleksander, Lumen Christi Institute and the American Cusanus Society, University of Chicago. (June 2020)
  • “ ‘Adrenaline Pulses in the Cables of Reality’: The Technohumanist Imagination of Italian Science Fiction’s Connettivist Movement.” Italian Media and Popular Culture Symposium. Indiana University. (April 2020) starts at 1:07:50
  • “We Never Hear the Wind Itself: Inhumanism in Italian Humanist Thought.” The Languages of Nature: Science, Literature, and the Imagination. Workshop directed by Paula Findlen. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. (Sept. 2019)
  • “Visibile Parlare and the Invisible.” Plurilingualism and the Visibile Parlare: International Seminar on Critical Approaches to Dante and the Dante Society of America. University of Toronto. (May 2019)
  • “Inhumanities.” The Liberal Arts & Engagement in Dark Times. Panel Discussion. Hampshire College. (April 2019)
  • “Renaissance Inhumanism: Defining the Human through What We Are Not.” Yale University. (March, 2019)
  • “Inhumanism: Unthinking the Human in the Italian Renaissance.” Speroni Lecture, UCLA. (Nov. 2018)
  • “Flying Saucers Would Never Land in Lucca: Italian Science Fiction.” Department of Italian, UCLA. (Nov. 2018)
  • “Measured Words: Computation and Writing in Renaissance Italy.” De Bosis Colloquium. Harvard University. (April 2018)
  • “Dante and Contemporary American Satire.” Mary Washington University. (March 2018)
  • “Quadrivial Comedy in Alberti’s Musca.” Conference: “Alberti Ludens.” Oxford University.​ (June 2017)
  • “An Esoteric Illus-translation of the Commedia: Paul Laffoley’s Divine Comedy Triptych (1972-1975).” Dante Society of America. Annual Meeting. University of Oregon. (May 2017)
  • “The Fiction of Italian Science Fiction.” Florida State University. (March 2017)
  • “Translating Science Fiction.” Florida State University. (March 2017)
  • “Dante in Popular Culture.” Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Boston, MA. (Oct. 2016)
  • “Hell, Yes! Dante in Contemporary American Satire.” Bowdoin Alumni Association of NYC. Yahoo!  NYC  (June 2016)
  • “Nuove geografie e biodiversità nella fantascienza di oggi.” Libreria AsSaggi. Rome, Italy.  (May 2016)
  • “So Say We All: The Fiction of World Science Fiction.” Dept. of Comparative Literature. Penn State. (March 2016)
  • “The Development and Use of Dante Today.com.” NEH Seminar directed by Deborah Parker. University of Virginia.  (July 2015)
  • “The Rainbow Fire-Breathing Topology and Combinatorics of Dante’s Trinity.” Dante Lecture. Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.  (March 2015)
  • “Tartaglia’s Poetic Solution to the Cubic Equation.” Notre Dame. Dept. of Mathematics.  (March 2015)
  • “Dante in Popular Culture.”  University of Virginia. Italian Department. ( March 2015)
  • “Dante for and of Today.” CUNY-Graduate Center, NYC.  (Oct. 2014)
  • “Tartaglia’s Poetic Solution to the Cubic Equation.” Colby College, Mathematics Department.  (Sept. 2014)
  • “Paradiso 33.” University of Tennessee. Italian Department.  (April 2014)
  • Dante’s Paradiso.” University of Maine-Orono, Honor’s Program.  (April 2014)
  • “Lectura Dantis: Paradiso 28.”  Boston College.  (Oct. 2012)
  • “Code Writing: Leon Battista Alberti’s De cifris (1466).” Stanford University, Italian Department.  (May 2012)
  • “Dante and Popular Culture.” Holy Cross, Italian Department.  (April 2012)
  • “Reflections on Love in Dante’s Divine Comedy.” University Club of New York City.  (April 2012)
  • “Dante.” University of Maine-Orono, Honors Program.  (April 2012)
  • “Dante and Popular Culture.” Bucknell University, Italian Department.  (March 2012)
  • “Divine but not Golden: Luca Pacioli and the Renaissance Mathematics of Lettering.” Brown University, Italian Department.  (March 2012)
  • “Niccolò Tartaglia’s Poetic Solution to the Cubic Equation.” University of Maine-Orono, Department of Mathematics.  (Dec. 2011)
  • Seminar discussant, Futures. Johns Hopkins University, Department of German and Romance Languages.  (Nov. 2011)
  • with Elliott King, “Dante and Dalí.” Georgia Museum of Art. Athens, GA.  (April 2011)
  • “Giordano Bruno, Philosopher of the Forbidden.” Hampshire College.  (Dec. 2010)
  • “Renaissance Cryptography.” Loyola University.  (Oct. 2010)
  • “Math and the Alphabet in Renaissance Italy.” Ohio State University, Comparative Studies Department.  (April 2010)
  • “Futurist Gastropolemics.” Smith College. (April 2010)
  • “Giambattista Della Porta’s Flexilinear Language.” Indiana University. (March 2010)
  • “Purgatorio XV.” McGill University.  (March 2010)
  • “Dante and Pop Culture.” McGill University.  (March 2010)
  • “The Cryptographer’s Flying Eyeball: A Case Study in Interdisciplinarity.” Karofsky Encore Lecture. Bowdoin College.  (Jan. 2010)
  • Keynote: “Interdisciplinarity.” The State of Italian Studies. Wellesley College.  (Dec. 2009)
  • “Niccolò Tartaglia’s Poetic Solution to the Cubic Equation.” University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Mathematics.  (Oct. 2009)
  • “Leon Battista Alberti e la crittografia: Un duetto in cifra tra il linguaggio e la matematica.” Palazzo Rucellai. Florence, Italy.  (April 2009)
  • “Literature and Mathematics in Early Modern Italy.” Villa I Tatti, Florence, Italy.  (Nov. 2008)
  • “Twists, Knots, and the Very Small: Pathways into the Literary and Mathematical Imaginations.” Harvard University.  (March 2008)
  • “Alberti’s Cryptography.” Codes in Conflict: New Formations in Early Modern Studies. The Center for Early Modern Studies. University of Wisconsin-Madison.  (Feb. 2008)
  • “Dante: Stella della cultura Pop?” Circolo Italiano di Boston. Harvard University.  (Dec. 2007)
  • Keynote: “In a network of lines that enlace: Science and the Italian Literary Imagination.” Scientifica-mente: The Symbiosis of Literature and Science in Italian Culture. University of Chicago.  (Feb. 2006)
  • “A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld: The Polyphonic Discourse of Electronic Music.” University of California, Santa Cruz.  (Jan. 2006)
  • “Rewarding.” Bowdoin Honors Day.  (May 2005)
  • “Lyrical Numbers: The Poetry of Mathematics in Early Modern Europe.” University of Oregon.  (Feb. 2005)
  • “Lyrical Numbers: The Poetry of Mathematics in Early Modern Europe.” Yale University.  (Feb. 2005)
  • “Spazio e letteratura.” Centro Internazionale di Studi Deradiani, San Demetrio Corone, Italy.  (June 2004)
  • “Number, Shape, and Word in Renaissance Italian Literature.” Humanities Center, Harvard University.  (March 2004)
  • “Well-Versed Mathematics in Early Modern Italy.” Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.  (March 2004)
  • “Hyperdimensionality in Salvador Dalí’s Illustrations of Dante’s Paradiso.” Dante Society of America, Cambridge, MA.  (April 2003)
  • “Waterways to the Divine: Liquid Language in Altered States of Consciousness.” Università di Venezia Ca’ Foscari. (May 2024)
  • “Three Contemporary Artists Illuminating Dantean Paths Through Difficult Times.” University of Pennsylvania. (April 2024)

CONFERENCES

  • “Giordano Bruno and the Alien:  A Conversation with Nat Mengist. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Tempe, AZ.
  • “Dante and American Science Fiction.” Come l’uom s’etterna: Dante’s Lasting Presence in Popular Culture.” Princeton University. (Nov. 2021)
  • “Italy on the Speculation Spectrum: Looking to Digital Media and Digitized Mediums to Locate Italian Futurity.” (Italian) Media Studies Today. Ohio State University. (May 2021)
  • Respondent to Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio, “Between Prophecy and Utopia: Dante as a Communitarian Thinker.” Dante Politico at the Crossroads of Arts and Sciences. University of Rochester. (April 2021)
  • “Paul Laffoley’s Inner/Outerspace: The Dantesphere (1978).” Psychology and the Other. Boston College (Oct. 2019)
  • “We Never Hear the Wind Itself: Inhumanism in Italian Humanist Thought.” The Languages of Nature: Science, Literature, and the Imagination. Workshop directed by Paula Findlen. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. (Sept. 2019)
  • “Visibile Parlare and the Invisible.” Plurilingualism and the Visibile Parlare: International Seminar on Critical Approaches to Dante and the Dante Society of America. University of Toronto. Toronto, Canada. (May 2019)
  • “Paradiso 28.” Reading the Commedia with Images: An Experimental Lectura Dantis. Harvard University. Cambridge, MA. (April 2019)
  • Roundtable Participant, Author Meets Critics: Dante and the Problems of Political Philosophy by Paul Stern. New England Political Science Association. Portland, ME (April 2019)
  • Chair, The RSA Mentoring Program. Renaissance Society of America. Toronto, Canada. (March 2019).
  • Co-organizer with Lisa Yaszek, Three roundtables: Science Fiction as Protest I, II, & III. Society of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Tempe, Arizona. (Nov. 2017)
  • Co-organizer with Robert Rushing, Italian Futures. American Association of Italian Studies. Columbus, OH. (April 2017)
  • Respondent, The Early Modern Book as Visual Enterprise. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL. (March 2017)
  • Respondent, Point and Line in Renaissance Thought I. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL. (March 2017)
  • Co-organizer with David Albertson, Two panels: Point and Line in Renaissance Thought I & II. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL. (March 2017)
  • Co-organizer with Deborah Parker, Three panels: Dante’s Reception in Word and Images I, II, & III. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL. (March 2017)
  • “The Quadrivial Comedy of the House Fly: Leon Battista Alberti’s Musca.” Literary and Scientific Cultures in Early Modernity. Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA. (Jan. 2017)
  • “The Dogma of the Triple: Dante’s Topological Encounter with the Trinity.” Constraints as Stimuli for Literary Creativity. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Atlanta, GA.  (Nov. 2016)
  • “Altro dove: New Ways of Visualizing Dante’s Cosmos.” Dante and Science. Renaissance Society of America, Boston, MA.  (March 2016)
  • Chair, Ethics and Religion in Machiavelli’s Thought. Renaissance Society of America, Boston, MA.  (March 2016)
  • Chair, Reading Form in European Poetry. Renaissance Society of America, Boston, MA.  (March 2016)
  • Chair, Between Science and Fiction: Cosmology and Society in the Grand Siècle. Renaissance Society of America, Boston, MA.  (March 2016)
  • Chair, City of the Mind: Tommaso Campanella’s Poetic and Political Architecture of Thought. Modern Language Association. Vancouver, Canada. (Jan. 2015)
  • “The Fluidity of Equivocation: Alberti’s Paradoxical Encomium to the House Fly and Mathematics.” Fossils, Figs, and Flies: Movement and Metamorphosis in Early Modernity. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Dallas, TX. (Oct. 2014)
  • “Dante for and of Today.” Intersezioni: Italy in Music, Art, Literature, and Cinema. Turin, Italy.  (June 2014)
  • “The Music, Measure, and Cosmic Flight of the House Fly: Quadrivial Comedy in Alberti’s Musca.” Renaissance Worlds from Dante to Vico.Renaissance Society of America, New York, NY.  (March 2014)
  • “Guardians of Fallen Angels, Wolves of the Stars: Italian Science Fiction’s Connettivismo Collective.” Science Fictional Spaces. Society for Literature Science, and the Arts. University of Notre Dame, Indiana. (Oct. 2013)
  • “Piazza Galattica: Verso la prima antologia della fantascienza italiana negli USA.” Italcon: Convention Nazionale della Fantascienza e del Fantastico, Bellaria, Italy.  (May 2013)
  • “Balancing the Books in the Caccia di Diana.” Modes of Signification. Boccaccio at 700: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts. Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. SUNY Binghamton, NY.  (April 2013)
  • “Italian Science Fiction.”Writing and Publishing Science Fiction in Italy. Chicon 7: The 70th Annual World Science Fiction Convention. Chicago, IL.  (August 2012) 
  •  “Tra l’uomo e Dio Pittagora ponea”: The Lives in Baldi’s Vite de’ matematici.” Rethinking the Boundaries of Humanism.  Renaissance Society of America, Washington, D.C.  (March 2012)
  • “Italian Science Fiction.” World Science Fiction. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Ontario, Canada.  (Sept. 2011)
  • Roundtable, African-American Reception of Dante. American Association of Italian Studies. Pittsburgh, PA.  (April 2011)
  • Roundtable, Dante and the Popular Imagination. The Winter Meeting of the Dante Society of America. Modern Language Association. Los Angeles, CA.  (Jan. 2011)
  • “Math and the Alphabet in the Italian Renaissance.” Italian Literature.  Renaissance Society of America. Venice, Italy.  (April 2010)
  • Respondent: Space in the Renaissance I & II. Renaissance Society of America. Venice, Italy.  (April 2010)
  • “The Architecture of the Afterlife: Paul Laffoley’s The Divine Comedy Triptych.” Occultism and Science in Twentieth-Century Art. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Atlanta, GA.  (Nov. 2009)
  • “Math and the Alphabet in the Italian Renaissance.” Math in Theory I. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Atlanta, GA.  (Nov. 2009)
  • Organizer and Chair, Italian Literature: From Counter-Reformation Grace to Baroque Dissimulation. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL.  (April 2008)
  • “The Language of Code: Leon Battista Alberti’s De componendis cifris (1466).” Words Contained, Words Transposed: Writing and Rewriting in the Italian Renaissance. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, IL.  (April 2008)
  • “Two Contemporary Illustrators of Dante’s Commedia.” Tra Amici: A Symposium in Honor of Giuseppe Mazzotta. University of Mary Washington. Fredericksburg, VA.  (March 2008)
  • Presenter on the roundtable Annotated Bibliography: New Work in Literature and Science. Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL.  (Dec. 2007)
  • Organizer and Chair, Micro: Studies in the Very Small. Division of Literature and Science. Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL.  (Dec. 2007)
  • Chair, Italian Literature. Renaissance Society of America. Miami, FL.  (March 2007)
  • “Leon Battista Alberti’s Code Words: De componendis cifris (1466).” Italian Literature and Science. Division of Italian Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Modern Language Association. Philadelphia, PA.  (Dec. 2006)
  • Organizer and Chair, Cyphernetics: Signs, Codes, Texts. Division of Literature and Science. Modern Language Association. Philadelphia, PA. (Dec. 2006)
  • Chair, Mathematics and the Body. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, NY, NY.  (Nov. 2006)
  • Organizer and Chair, Italian within an Interdisciplinary Context. The Italian Legacy at Yale: Alumni Conference. New Haven, CT.  (Oct. 2006)
  • “Microsuoni.” Minimalisms. American Association of Italian Studies, Genova, Italy.  (May 2006)
  • Organizer and Chair, Dark Matters. American Association of Italian Studies, Genova, Italy.  (May 2006)
  • Organizer and Chair, “Rhythm Science” and Reading Electronic Music. Division of Literature and Science. Modern Language Association, Washington, D.C.  (Dec. 2005)
  • “The Space of the Fantastic in Italian Literature.” Space and Literature. Northeastern Modern Language Association, Cambridge, MA.  (April 2005)
  • “Handmaiden to Philology and Mistress of the Arts: Geometry as Metaphor in Early Modern Thought.” Roundtable: Between Semiotics and Geometry: Metaphor, Science, and the Trading Zone. Division of Literature and Science. Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA.  (Dec. 2004)
  • “Niccolò Tartaglia’s Poetic Solution to the Cubic Equation.” Mathematics, Philosophy, and Interpretation. Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton, NY.  (Oct. 2004)
  • “The Garden of Archimedes: The Poetry of Mathematics in Early Modern Europe.” Mathematics and the Imagination I: Early Modern. Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Durham, NC.  (Oct. 2004)
  • “Mathematics and Literature.” Roundtable: Science and Literature. American Association of Italian Studies, Ottawa, Canada.  (April 2004)
  • “Flexilinear Language: Giambattista Della Porta’s Impure Mathematics.” Noble and Ignoble Mathematics in Renaissance Italy. Renaissance Society of America, New York, NY.  (March 2004)
  • Chair, Dante: Seeing Pain, Feeling Pain, Canonizing Texts. Division of Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature. Modern Language Association, San Diego, CA.  (Dec. 2003)
  • Organizer and chair, Hard Choices: How Should Literary Theorists Approach Science? Division of Literature and Science. Modern Language Association, New York, NY.  (Dec. 2002)
  • “Antirectilinear Satire in Giordano Bruno’s Candelaio.” Number, Shape, Word. Society for Literature and Science, Pasadena, CA.  (Oct. 2002)
  • “Mathematics’ Slow Rise to Power in Renaissance Florence.” Intellectual Currents in Rome, Florence, and Venice. Renaissance Society of America, Tempe, AZ.  (April 2002)
  • “What is the Math in Bruno’s mathesis?” Giordano Bruno. American Association of Italian Studies, Philadelphia, PA.  (April 2001)
  • Organizer and chair, Leveling the Field: Science Studies vs. Science and Literature. Division of Literature and Science. Modern Language Association, Washington, DC.  (Dec. 2000)
  • “Why Women Want To Know about Optics.” Learning Science. Society for Literature and Science, Atlanta, GA.  (Oct. 2000)
  • “Algarotti, Optics, and Women.” Optical Allusions in Italian Literature. American Association of Italian Studies, New York, NY.  (April 2000)
  • “Symmetry Operations as Terminological Tools for Literary Analysis.” Society for Literature and Science, Norman, OK.  (Oct. 1999)
  • “A Psychedelic Renaissance.” Psichedelia italiana. American Association of Italian Studies, Sorrento, Italy. (June 2024) 
  • Chair, Freedom, Prophecy, and Hubris in Dante and Machiavelli. Renaissance Society of America, Chicago (April 2024)

Grants, Fellowships, and Awards

  • 2023 and 2024: Dean’s Office Grant (JHU) for the redevelopment of the website Dante Today with Studio Rainwater

  • 2023-2025: Funding from Dr. David Yaden’s lab at the Johns Hopkins Medical School to hire a postdoctoral student to work with me researching known psychoactive plants and fungi in premodern Italy and gathering experiences of altered-state of consciousness in premodern Italian literature and culture.

  • 2021: Faculty Research Grant (Bowdoin, for work on Dante in the contemporary visual arts)
  • 2019: Kendrick Book Award, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (for Measured Words)
  • 2019: Faculty Travel Grant (Bowdoin)
  • 2018 – 2019: Faculty Sabbatical Supplement (Bowdoin)
  • 2018: The Bridge Award, American Initiative for Italian Culture (for Measured Words)
  • 2017: Weiss-Brown Publication Award, The Newberry Library (for Measured Words)
  • 2016: Scaglione Publication Award, Modern Language Association (for Measured Words)
  • 2014: Course Development Grant (Bowdoin, for the “World Science Fiction” course)
  • 2013: Faculty Travel Grant (Bowdoin)
  • 2012: Faculty Research Grant (Bowdoin, for Fantascienza: An Anthology of Italian Science Fiction)
  • 2012 – 2013: Faculty Sabbatical Supplement (Bowdoin)
  • 2008 – 2009: Villa I Tatti Fellowship, The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies
  • 2008 – 2009: NEH Research Fellowship (declined)
  • 2007: Faculty Research Grant (Bowdoin)
  • 2004: Sydney B. Karofsky Prize (Bowdoin, for teaching, given to one faculty member a year)
  • 2003 – 2004: Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship
  • 2003 – 2004: Kenan Fellowship (Bowdoin, for sabbatical)
  • 2000: Faculty Research Grant (Bowdoin)
  • 2000:  Theron Rockwell Field Prize for Ph.D. Thesis, “Giordano Bruno’s Geometry of Language” (Yale, for the best “poetic, literary, or religious work of scholarship” in any department that year)
  • 1998 – 1999: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici Dissertation Award (Naples, Italy)
  • 1998 (fall): Yale College Fellow to teach a College Seminar
  • 1998 (summer): John Perry Miller Research Grant (Yale)
  • 1998 (summer): Warburg Institute Seminar Fellowship (London, England)
  • 1997 – 1998 Lionel Pincus Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities (Yale)
  • 1997 (summer): John F. Enders Research Grant (Yale)
  • 1995 – 1998 (summers): Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, research grants (Naples, Italy)
  • 1994 (spring): Folger Institute Semester-Long Fellowship
  • 1993 – 1995: A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellowship for Italian Studies (Yale)
  • 1993 – 1997: Yale University Fellowship
  • 1993: The Pirandello Lyceum Award for Italian Studies

Interviews and Media

Recorded Lectures

Keynote: ‘Che va di notte che porta il lume indietro’: Three Contemporary Artists Illuminating Dantean Paths Through Difficult Times: Maru Ceballos (Buenos Aires), Kat Mustatea (NYC), Kazumasa Chiba (Tokyo). American Association of Italian Studies. (June 2021) (recording here: please note, some images are graphic in nature and not for young audiences)