Leon Jacobowitz-Efron

Ben Gurion University

The popular image of Dante as a theologian

2011-2012: Fall

Leon Jacobowitz Efron is Visiting Lecturer of Medieval History as Achva College of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. His dissertation on the religious reception of Dante Alighieri was written at Tel-Aviv University's School for Historical Studies, under the supervision of Dr. Yossef Schwartz (TAU) and Prof. Peter S. Hawkins (Yale). It won Tel-Aviv University's Funkenstein Award for Outstanding and Original Ph.D. Dissertation.
He is interested in late medieval and early modern secular-vernacular thought, and has a particular interest in questions of authority and specifically in lay subversion of ecclesiastic authority in 14th and 15th century texts and art.
Presently he is working on a monograph about the popular image of Dante as a theologian at Columbia University's Italian Academy.