Susanna Barsella

B.A. in Economics, Università di Pisa (Italy)
M. Phil. in Economics, University of York (UK)
Ph.D. in Italian Literature, The Johns Hopkins University

Medieval Studies, Comparative Literatures, Italian Medieval and Early Humanism Studies.

Dr. Barsella’s main area of research is in Italian Medieval literature with a specific interest in the literature of Early Humanism. Her publications range from Dante, to Petrarca, Boccaccio, Michelangelo, and on the idea of work from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Dr. Barsella’s interests also embrace twentieth-century literature with publications on Pirandello, Gadda, and twentieth-century poetry. She published a book on Dante’s cosmology: In the Light of the Angels. Angelology and Cosmology in Dante’s Divina Commedia, Florence, Olschki, in 2010. Among her latest publications in this field are “Dante e la machina mundi. Modelli cosmologici e l’Epistola XIII a Cangrande della Scala.” Studi Danteschi (2019) and, together with V. Vespri, “Dante’s Cosmos and the Geometry of Paradise,” Italianistica 2021. Co-edited with Francesco Ciabattoni she has published The Humanist Workshop. Essays in Honor of Salvatore Camporeale O.P. in 2012. Together with  A. Andreini, E. Filosa, J. Houston, and S. Tognetti, she co-edited Niccolò Acciaiuoli, Giovanni Boccaccio, è la Certosa del Galluzzo. Politica, religione ed economia nell’Italia del Trecento, Roma, Viella, 2020. Co-edited with Simone Marchesi, is the volume Lectura Boccaccii. The Day Nine in Perspective, forthcoming for Toronto University Press. She is currently one of the organizers of the conference on Cultures of Exchange. Mercantile Mentalities between Italy and the World for the Center of Medieval Studies at Fordham (March 2022), and of the American Boccaccio Association Paleography Seminar (June 2022).

• MLEU 1250 – The Medieval Imagery of Hell
• ITAL 2561 – Reading Culture Through Literature (Italian Style: Food, Fashion, and Design) 
• ITAL2800 – Italy and the Arts 
• MLAL/COLI/ITAL3010 – Politics and Poetry in Medieval Mediterranean and the Rise of Vernacular Cultures 
• ITAL 3011 – Dante and His Age
• MLAL 3012 – Medieval Storytelling - Merchants’ Tales 
• ITAL 3012 – Medieval Storytelling - Italian novella
• ITAL 3050 – Art, Politics, and Literature in Italian Humanism 
• ITAL 3062 – Ethics and Economic Values in Medieval Literature
• AMCS/MLAL/COLI3535 – Building the Ideal City. Ethics and Economic Foundations of Realizable Utopias 
• ITAL3660 – Avanguardia and War. Arts and Literature in the XXth-Century Italy 
• MVST/ITAL4006 – Dante's Cosmos. Science, Theology, and Literature. 
• MVST4007 – Medieval Found of Modernity. Petrarch and the Origin of Modern Consciousness.
• Italian Language and Literature – all levels

1. Digital Project for the transcription and translation of the manuscript MS Typ 422 (Houghton Library, Harvard) containing Leon Battista Alberti’s Deiphira. Available at Georgetown University, Department of Italian and Global Medieval Studies https://medievalstudies.georgetown.edu/the-deiphira-project/
2. The Sfera by Goro Dati. Transcription of the Wellcome Library, MS 231. https://lasferachallenge.wordpress.com/team-2/
3. Friburgo Legge Petrarca: ​​https://padlet.com/pborsa/friburgoleggepetrarca. Reading of Petrarch’s Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta 293 (RVF293 - Canzoniere 293).

1. “Michele Barbi filologo della storia tra Italia e Stati Uniti,” Studi Danteschi LXXXV, 2020 (385-410, released December 2021).
2. “Dante’s Cosmos and the Geometry of Paradise,” Italianistica, L.1, 2021 (239-252), co-authored with Prof. Vincenzo Vespri (University of Florence, Mathematics Department)
3. “Dante, gli angeli e la perfezione del creato,” Studi Cattolici 725, July 2021 (512-517). 
4. “Liberi soggiacete,” in Citar Dante. Espressioni dantesche per l’italiano di oggi. M. Galdi and I. Chierico, ETP Books, 2021 (178-180).
5. “Dante e Ildegarda von Bingen. Proposte di ricerca” in A. Casadei, P. Pontari e M. Cambi eds. Dante e la Toscana occidentale: tra Lucca e Sarzana (1306-1308), Pisa, Pisa University Press, 2021 (353-361)
6. “Dante e la machina mundi. Modelli cosmologici e l’Epistola XIII a Cangrande della Scala.” Studi Danteschi LXXXIV (2019): 205-265. (Peer and editorial board reviewed) (PEBR, 2020)
7. “Il moto delle “etterne rote”: La cosmologia dantesca tra la Commedia e l’Epistola XIII a Cangrande della Scala,” in Nuove inchieste sull’Epistola a Cangrande. Atti della giornata di studi, Pisa 18 dicembre 2018, A. Casadei ed. in collaboration with E. Orsi and M. Signori, Pisa University Press, 2020 (195-224). 
8. “Mastro Simone and Boccaccio’s Critique to Medieval Science”, Tradition and the Individual Text. Essays in Memory of Pier Massimo Forni, F. Brunori Deigan, F. Ciabattoni, S. Giannini, eds. Modern Languages Notes (MLN) 134 Supplement (2019): 56-77. 
9. “The Sacred and the Artifice of Illusion. A Reconsideration of Boccaccio’s “Realism” in Decameron I,1. In Dialogues on the Decameron, Katherine Brown ed. Special Issue of Quaderni d’Italianistica, vol. 38.2, 2017 (11-40, released February 2019). 
10. “Boccaccio, i tiranni e la ragione naturale,” Heliotropia, vols. 12-13, 2015-2016, (131-163).