Joseph Luzzi

Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature

Primary Academic Program: Literature

Academic Program Affiliation(s): Italian Studies

Area of Specialization: Dante; Italian and European Romanticism; Italian film; modern European literature; modern Italian culture and society; issues in comparative literary studies; the Renaissance.

Biography: Joseph Luzzi received his PhD from Yale and is the author of eight books, including most recently Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography and a translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova. His Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance was a New Yorker Best Books of 2022 selection and shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. Other books include Romantic Europe and the Ghost of

Italy, which received the MLA’s Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies; A Cinema of Poetry: Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film, a finalist for the international prize “The Bridge Book” Award; My Two Italies, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love, a Vanity Fair “Must Read” that has been translated into multiple languages. His honors include a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award; Wallace Fellowship from Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; Yale College teaching prize; essay award from the Dante Society of America; and fellowships from the National Humanities Center and Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, American Scholar, Times of London, Chronicle of Higher Education, and many others. In 2017, he was named Honorary Citizen of Acri, Calabria, the Italian birthplace of his parents, and he has been profiled in media venues including the Guardian and National Public Radio. At Bard since 2002.
2014 — Publication
My Two Italies
Website: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=my+two+italies

2013-04-19 — Publication
Joseph Luzzi reviews Clive James's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy for the New York Times.
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/books/review/dantes-divine-comedy-translated-by-clive-james.html?e

2012-12-28 — Publication
Joseph Luzzi reviews Sheila Hale's biography of Titian for the New York Times.
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/books/review/titian-his-life-by-sheila-hale.html?_r=0

2012-05-14 — Lecture
Joseph Luzzi lectures on Dante’s Paradiso 26, as part of Boston College’s public readings of The Divine Comedy.
Website: http://frontrow.bc.edu/program/luzzi1

2012 — Interview
Joseph Luzzi discusses Italian film and Italian-American culture with Big Think, an Internet forum that features interviews with academics and intellectuals about their research.
Website: http://bigthink.com/users/joseph-luzzi

Phone: 845-758-7150
Website: https://www.josephluzzi.com
Email:
Office: Seymour 204