Fellows 2014–2015

Vanderbilt University

War, economy and culture in Italy, 1330–1450.

2014-2015: Spring

I am a Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of medieval European history at Vanderbilt University. My primary field of study is economic history, with interest also in literature. I received my Ph.D from Yale University in 1992, where I primarily studied Greek and Latin patristics. Full bio: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/historydept/caferro.html

Columbia University

Data fusion and data modeling: how Big Data can help us understand the development of illness in adolescents at ultra-high risk for psychosis.

2014-2015: Fall

Alexander Bodini Research Fellow in Developmental and Adolescent Psychiatry

Tiziano Colibazzi, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Clinical Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also on faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Dr Colibazzi's research focuses on understanding mechanisms that lead to the development of psychotic illness through the use of anatomical imaging, functional imaging (fMRI), DTI and resting state imaging. These imaging modalities are combined through a variety of multivariate methods with the goal of identifying biological predictors of psychosis.

Conservatorio “Arrigo Pedrollo” di Musica di Vicenza

“Nata per morire”: musical memory and memory of music in early modern Europe

2014-2015: Spring

Stefano Lorenzetti studied organ and harpsichord with Kenneth Gilbert and earned his Ph. D. in History and Civilization at the European University Institute of Florence. Currently, he is professor of the History of music at Conservatory of music of Vicenza. Lorenzetti has concentrated his research activity on the history of education, on the history of ideas, on the history of the Italian oratorio, on the relationship between music and the art of memory and on performance practice and musical space. His monograph Musica e identità nobiliare nell’Italia del Rinascimento. Educazione, mentalità, immaginario, has enshrined him as one of the most significant and innovative scholars of Renaissance music. 

He has given concerts and conferences throughout Europe and the United States, in particular at the Academia Chigiana in Siena, at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, at the Centre d’Etudes de la Supérieures Renaissances in Tours, at University of California, Davis (Valente lectures), at Villa I Tatti (Harvard University) and at Stanford University (Ron Alexander Lectures). 

www.umbralucis.it

Columbia University

Using nanotechnology to explore and understand inks in ancient manuscripts

2014-2015: Fall and Spring

Co-sponsored by Columbia's Center for Integrated Science and Engineering, Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center Program.

I received an undergraduate degree in Applied Physics from Columbia University. During that time I worked in an optics lab studying the properties of graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, with Raman spectroscopy. I went on to explore the interaction of hydrogen on graphene for hydrogen storage during my PhD studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy. Currently, I am at Columbia University as a postdoc using mirco-Raman spectroscopy to study the pigments of ancient manuscripts. The goal is to understand the evolution of black ink in antiquity and hopefully develop a new non-destructive technique for determining the age of these documents.
http://cise.columbia.edu/ancient-ink-laboratory/research-team

Università di Perugia

Machiavelli's reception on the theatrical and political scene of Elizabethan England: the role of Alberico Gentili

2014-2015: Fall

Professor Rosanna Camerlingo teaches English Literature at the University of Perugia. She obtained a Phd in Comparative Literature at New York University and was a fellow of the Italian Academy in New York in the academic year 2002-2003. She teaches and studies Renaisance Literature, with an emphasis on the relationship between religion, political thinking and literature. She has written books on Philip Sidney and the Italian Renaissance literature; on the influence of Giordano Bruno's philosophy on Christopher Marlowe's theatre; and many articles on Shakespeare's Sonnets and Renaissance poetry. Her latest book on the realationship between treatises on confession and Shakespeare's tragedies, Crimini e Peccati. La confessione al tempo di Amleto, will be published in the fall of 2014.

Web page: http//www.unipg.it/pagina-personale?matricola=005477

Columbia University

Aberrant brain development of attention and language circuits as early risk markers of autism

2014-2015: Spring

Marisa Spann obtained a PhD in clinical psychology with a specialization in neuropsychology from George Washington University and a MPH at Yale School of Public Health. She recently completed a T32 postdoctoral research fellowship at Columbia University, College of Physicians & Surgeons/New York State Psychiatric Institute with emphasis on translational child psychiatry and developmental neuroimaging. She continues at Columbia as an Associate Research Scientist. Her research centers on how prenatal risk factors affect brain and cognitive development during early childhood, and result in later childhood psychopathology. She is also interested in identifying sensitive timeframes during brain and cognitive development that confer the greatest risk for childhood psychopathology.

Università di Roma Tre

A synthesis of the arts: the artistic experiments of Le Corbusier and Costantino Nivola in New York and Amagansett 1946–1955

2014-2015: Fall

Marida Talamona is a professor in History of Architecture in the Department of Architecture at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre and Director of the European Master’s Degree in History of Architecture. Her studies focus primarily on twentieth century architecture in Italy and France. She is the author of Casa Malaparte (Milan: Clup 1990), recipient of the International Architecture Book Award assigned by The American Institute of Architects (1993) and the Prix du Livre d'Architecture (1996) from the Académie d'Architecture in Paris. She has published essays in Italian and international magazines and collective volumes on the work of L. Figini and G. Pollini, G. Pagano Pogatschnig, A. Libera and L. Moretti, and on the role of Adriano Olivetti in the reconstruction of Southern Italy. She has obtained a PhD in History and Conservation of Art and Architecture with a thesis examining the relationships between Le Corbusier and Italian artistic culture between the two World Wars. She has been curator of the exhibitions L’Italia di Le Corbusier at MAXXI- Rome (October 2012-February 2013) with the accompanying catalogue (Milan: Electa 2012) and Building an Idea: McKim, Mead & White and the American Academy in Rome, 1914-2014 at American Academy in Rome ( May-June 2014), also with the accompanying catalogue (Pistoia: Gli Ori 2014).

Member of the Conseil d’Administration de la Fondation Le Corbusier

Web page: http://www.architettura.uniroma3.it/fac_docenti_scheda.html?id_doc=ARCH0...

2014-2015: Spring

Margherita Moscardini (born in Italy, 1981) investigates relationships among transformation processes in the urban, social and natural order. She often focuses on abandoned locations and areas undergoing demolition, whereby the demolitions’ waste systems become a paradigm of local complexities. Her work generally focuses on long-term projects in which the context itself becomes the medium.

Moscardini obtained a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, and attended the Advanced Course in Visual Arts with Yona Friedman at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como.In the last few years she has developed projects in South Korea, Turkey, Bulgaria, France, and Italy. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Italian Institute of Culture in Istanbul; MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; ArtToday CCA in Plovdiv, Bulgaria; SongEun Art Space in Seoul, South Korea; Schauwerk Foundation in Stuttgart; Palazzo Reale in Milan; and the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation in Florence. 

She is currently a guest at MMCA Changdong, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea, where she is working on her newest project.

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Worlds upside down: religion and historical imagination in Sierra Leone's diamond mines

2014-2015: Spring

Lorenzo D'Angelo received a Ph.D. in Human Sciences – curr. Anthropology of the Contemporary in 2011 at the University of Milano-Bicocca. Currently, he teaches Cultural Anthropology at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. He carried out his first researches with undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. Since 2007, he has been conducting an historical and ethnographic research on the economic, cultural, ecological and religious aspects of diamond mining in Sierra Leone. His areas of interest include the anthropology of work, commodity chains analysis, and political ecology.
https://independent.academia.edu/LorenzoDAngelo

University of Ottawa

Augustine, the Fall of Rome and Christian world alienation in Hannah Arendt

2014-2015: Spring

I studied Classics and Italian literature in Basel, Berne and Bologna and received a doctorate in Classics from the University of Zurich. I am currently an associate professor of Classics at the University of Ottawa. My fields of interest include later ancient Greek and Roman literature and philosophy, intellectual history, and dance research. My project at the Italian Academy is part of ongoing research on the Christian transformation of the ancient concept of scholé / otium ('leisure') and on the modern reception of Augustine.
http://www.cla-srs.uottawa.ca/eng/faculty/schlapbach.html

Università di Bologna

Partitioned countries, museums, and communities: Istria 1884–2014

2014-2015: Fall

Ilaria Porciani is professor of Modern and Contemporary History and the History of the Historiography at the Department of History, Cultures and Civilization of the University of Bologna.
She has published widely on the history of the historiography, on nationalism, on the history of the university and of education, often with a gender approach.
Her book La festa della nazione. Rappresentazione dello stato e spazi sociali nell'Italia unita(1996 – 2nd edition 1997) was awarded the Acqui storia prize for modern history.
She is a member of the board of the Journal of Modern European History; Passato e Presente; Nazioni e Regioni.
Among her publications: Atlas of European Historiography. The Making of a Profession 1800 – 2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2010 (co-edited with Lutz Rapahel), pp.264.
Setting the Standards. Institutions, networks and Communities in European Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2012 (co-edited with Jo Tollebeek), pp.456.
She is interested in public history, history museums, and in the political use of food.
She is presently working on Partitions, museums, and communities. Istria 1884-2014.
http://www.unibo.it/SitoWebDocente/default.aspx?UPN=ilaria.porciani%40un...

Friedrich-Alexander Universität

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, astrology and cultural memory: translating the disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem

2014-2015: Fall

H. Darrel Rutkin is a Historian of Science specializing in the history of medieval, Renaissance and early modern astrology with a PhD from Indiana University. Recipient of prestigious pre- and post-doctoral fellowships—including a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Villa I Tatti, Harvard University's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at M.I.T. and in its current incarnation at the Huntington Library, NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and most recently at the Internationales Kolleg for Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung (IKGF) at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität, Nürnberg-Erlangen —I am hoping to land a permanent academic appointment soon! I have also contributed to the Cambridge History of Science and the Harvard Companion to the Classical Tradition. At the Italian Academy, I will work on my translation (the first into English) of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Disputations against Divinatory Astrology for the I Tatti Renaissance Library.
https://uni-erlangen.academia.edu/HDarrelRutkin

University of Leeds

Literature and festivals in Renaissance Italy: a digital archive of texts and images

2014-2015: Fall

Francesca Bortoletti is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at at School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, for the European Research Council project "Italian Voices". She received her Ph.D. at the University of Bologna, Italy and at the Centre d’Étude Supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR), Tours, France. She held a three-years postdoctoral fellowship at University of Bologna and Research Associate for two years (2011-2013) at the Center for Early Modern History, University of Minnesota. In 2013, she was Visiting Research Scholar at European University Institute in Florence and Scuola Superiore Normale in Pisa. She taught formal courses in Italian literature and Theatre in Italy, France and USA. Her research interests are Italian Renaissance literature and performance as well as memory culture, with specific emphasis on the interactions between texts, oral culture, and images in humanistic and court culture. She has published several papers in international Academic journals and she is the author of two volumes, "Egloga e spettacolo nel primo Rinascimento. Da Firenze alle corti" (Bulzoni, 2008) and "L’attore del Parnaso. Profili di attori-musici e drammaturgie d’occasione" (Mimesis, 2012). She co-edited "Danza, cultura e società nel Rinascimento italiano" (Ephemeria, 2007).

Web page: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/profile/20055/1464/francesca__bortoletti

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

The admissible content of auditory experience.

2014-2015: Fall

Elvira Di Bona obtained her Ph.D. in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences at the Institut Jean Nicod – École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris and at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan in 2013. Her dissertation, co-tutored by Roberto Casati and Michele Di Francesco, was on auditory perception. During her Ph.D. course, she spent research periods at the New York University, as a Fulbright Scholar, and at the University of Sydney, as an ARIA (Association for Research between Italy and Australasia) Grantee. She got a violin diploma at the Conservatorio of L'Aquila and Terni, and completed the "High Specialization Course in Music Studies – Solo Violin Performance" at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia (Rome) in 2008. She is currently Research Affiliate at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research aims at developing a theory about the way in which, by audition, we perceive both objects' features (such as their texture or shape) and the space and time in which those objects are placed. In addition, she is working on a book on Frank Jackson's knowledge argument and on a project on aesthetics normativity sponsored by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) at the Freie Universität Berlin. She has published articles on pitch, the auditory perception of causation and sound in peer-reviewed international journals. At the Italian Academy she will be working on the admissible contents of auditory experience, which has been recently funded also by the Fondazione Franco e Marilisa Caligara to be developed at the University of Turin, Italy.

Università di Torino

When The Prince travelled to Egypt: politics and ideology in 19th- and 20th- century Arabic translation of Machiavelli

2014-2015: Spring

I currently hold a research and lecturing position at the University of Turin. After having obtained my PhD from the University Sapienza (Rome) in 2009, I was postdoctoral fellow at the research programme Zukunftsphilologie at Freie Universitat in Berlin (2011-2012) and an Herzog–Ernst Thyssen Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Gotha research library (2012). My research interests are comparative literature in the Mediterranean context (particularly focusing on the transmission of texts in the early modern Mediterranean world) and exchanges and relations between Italian and Arab intellectual worlds. My project at the Italian Academy aims to study the translation and the reception of Machiavelli's Il Principe in Egypt between 18th and 20th centuries.

Web page: http://www.dipartimentolingue.unito.it/Benigni/oss-home.asp

Worcester College - Oxford University

“Le cose lontane, vicine”: early eighteenth-century Europe and non-European architecture (1695–1725)

2014-2015: Spring

I hold higher degrees in both architecture and architectural history from the University IUAV in Venice, where I received a Ph.D. in the history of architecture and urbanism in 2011. I am currently (2011-2014) Scott Opler Research Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford, where I am completing a book on the British architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736) and eighteenth-century Oxford.
In the past ten years my research and publications have spanned European architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries with a focus on Italy, France, and Britain. I am particularly interested in the relationship between architecture and antiquarian studies within the European Republic of Letters, architectural drawings, the history of art collecting, the libraries of artists, the spaces of public institutions, and European encounters with non-European art. My various projects have received the support of the Paul Mellon Centre in London, the Francis Haskell Memorial Fund, the Samuel Kress Foundation, and the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome.
The new research project which I will develop at the Academy aims to recreate the European architect’s mental picture of non-European architecture at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The project deals with visual and textual printed sources available at the time, focusing in particular on travel literature.
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/faculty/staff/profile/pistis.html

Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Ars Oblivionalis: Digital techniques of remembering and forgetting

2014-2015: Fall

Co-Sponsored by Columbia's INCITE (Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics)

Elena Esposito teaches Sociology of Communication at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia (I). She works with the theory of social systems preferably on issues related with the social management of time, including memory and forgetting, fashion and transience, probability calculus, fiction and the use the time in finance. Her current research projects focus on the possibility and forms of forgetting on the web and on the proliferation of rankings and ratings for the management of information.
She published many works on the theory of social systems, media theory, memory theory and sociology of financial markets. Among them The Future of Futures. The Time of Money in Financing and Society, 2011; Die Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realität, 2007; Die Verbindlichkeit des Vorübergehenden. Paradoxien der Mode, 2004; Soziales Vergessen. Formen und Medien des Gedächtnisses der Gesellschaft, 2002.

Web site: http://personale.unimore.it/rubrica/dettaglio/elespos

Independent Scholar

"L'ebreo": a newly discovered play by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger

2014-2015: Spring

For nearly forty years, I have been working in Italian—primarily Florentine—archives, investigating Medici art patronage and collecting, cultural relations between Tuscany and Spain, and (most recently) Florentine Jewish history. My publications include various articles and four books: "Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage" (Princeton, 1983), "After Vasari: History, Art and Patronage in Late Medici Florence" (Princeton, 1988), "Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis" (Toronto, 2011) and "A Jew at the Medici Court: The Letters of Benedetto Blanis Hebreo, 1615-1621". 

An art historian by training, I completed a Ph.D. at Oxford University, taught in the Fine Arts Department at Harvard University and founded the Medici Archive Project in Florence, which I directed for many years. My latest project focuses on Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger's newly discovered five-act comedy, "L'Ebreo / The Jew" (1613)—which I will be developing at the Italian Academy as both a scholarly publication and a performance piece.
http://www.secretplacesitaly.net

Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia

Greek myths in cross-cultural translation: the case of Etruria

2014-2015: Fall and Spring

I received a PhD in Archaeology (Etruscan Studies) at the University of Rome La Sapienzain 2002, and taught Etruscan and Italic Epigraphy in the same university from 2006 to 2010, and later as a member of the Board of Teachers for the PhD in Linguistic History of Ancient Mediterranean at the IULM University of Milan. I am currently a socio corrispondente of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, a member of the Società Italiana di Storia delle Religioni, and a Margo Tytus Visiting Scholar Fellow at the University of Cincinnati (Summer 2014).
My research interests lie in the entire field of the history and culture of pre-Roman Italy, with special regard to issues of identity, culture-exchange and Greek and Roman acculturation. In particular, my project at the Italian academy focuses on ancient religion and mythology and in the changing cross-cultural relationships among them, seeking evidence of the agency of the Etruscan craftsmen and their patrons in the process of selection and adaptation of Greek myths into their own figural artistic representations.
In this field, along with a steady series of articles and papers in journals and edited volumes, I am author of the volume “Il dono votivo. Gli dei e il sacro nelle iscrizioni etrusche di culto,” (2009) and recently contributed to international books, such as “The Etruscan World” edited by J. Turfa (2013, with a chapter on the religious value of numbers and divisions in Etruria), “Handbook of Etruscology” edited by A. Naso (forthcoming, with a chapter on the Etruscan religion), and “The Role of Animals in ancient Myth and Religion,” edited by G. Casadio, A. Mastrocinque & P. Johnston (forthcoming, with a contribution on birds in Etruscan and Roman divination).
http://pont-ara.academia.edu/DanieleFedericoMaras

CUNY: The City College and Graduate Center

From arcana imperii to statistics: political information and science in the age of enlightenment

2014-2015: Fall

Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna

The Italian contribution to the European integration process: from the critique of sovereignty to the concept of civilian power

2014-2015: Spring

Università del Piemonte Orientale

Cultural and religious diversity: social standards and the principle of equal respect

2014-2015: Spring

Anna Elisabetta Galeotti is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Eastern Piedmont, Vercelli. She studied at the University of Pavia, and spent several years as Research Fellow at various Universities and Research Centers such as Cambride University, the European University Institute at Florence, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Center for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs of St.Andrews and the Edmund Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Among her works: Toleration as Recognition, Cambridge University Press 2002; “Relativism, Universalism, and Applied Ethics: The Case of Female Circumcision”, Constellations 2007; “Respect as Recognition” in The Plural States of Recognition ( 2010), “The place of conscientious objection in liberal democracy” in Diversity in Europe (2011), “Self-Deception: Intentional Plan or Mental Event?” Humana Mente, (2012), “Toleration and Purpose Built Mosques. Contestations in Contemporary Europe”, in How Group Matters (2014), “Liars or Self-Deceived? Reflections on Political Deception” Political Study (2014). 

Web page: http://www.lett.unipmn.it/docenti/galeotti/

2014-2015: Spring

Andrea Nacciarriti (born in Italy, 1976) studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna (1998-2003). In 2003, he wrote his thesis on “the dispersal of architectural language” and graduated with an honors degree in Fine Arts. In 2005, he attended the Advanced Course in Visual Arts with Alfredo Jaar at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como. Andrea has attended residency programs in China, Finland, and Morocco. In 2010 he won the Terna Prize 03. Naciarriti’s work is in institutional and private collections including La Maison Rouge, Foundation Antoine de Galbert in Paris, and La Gaia Collection in Busca (northern Italy). Recent solo exhibitions include “and the ship sails on” at the Fondazione Pescheria - Centro Arti Visive in Pesaro, Italy; "no one knew what anyone else was doing” at CAB, Grenoble, France; and "crystallize" at the Franco Soffiantino Gallery in Turin. He lives and works in Milan.