Teodolinda Barolini is Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (B.A. 1972) and Columbia University (M.A. 1973, Ph.D. 1978), Professor Barolini taught at the University of California at Berkeley and New York University before returning to Columbia University in 1992 as Chair of the Department of Italian. She served as Chair until 2004 and is currently Director of Graduate Studies. Her research focuses on thirteenth and fourteenth century Italian literature, especially Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the lyric tradition. She is the author of three books: Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the 'Comedy' (Princeton, 1984; Italian trans. 1993); The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton, 1992; Italian trans. 2003); Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture (Fordham, 2006). Barolini is the editor of Medieval Constructions in Gender and Identity (ACMRS, 2005) and co-editor, with H. Wayne Storey, of Dante for the New Millennium (Fordham, 2003), and Petrarch and the Textual Origins of Interpretation (Brill, 2007). Barolini is currently working on a commentary to Dante's lyrics for the Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, a book on Petrarch as metaphysical poet, and gender in the early Italian tradition. Barolini is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (class of 2000), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (class of 2001), and a member of the American Philosophical Society (class of 2002). From 1997-2003, she served as fifteenth President of the Dante Society of America.