People
Susanna Barsella, (Phd, The Johns Hopkins University) is Professor of Italian for the Modern Languages and Literatures Department and the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University. Dr. Barsella’s main research is in Italian Medieval literature with an 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 embrace twentieth-century literature, inlcuding Pirandello, Gadda, and twentieth-century poetry. Her published work includes In the Light of the Angels. Angelology and Cosmology in Dante’s Divina Commedia (Olschki in 2010), and The Humanist Workshop. Essays in Honor of Salvatore Camporeale (with Francesco Ciabattoni,O.P., 2012). Currently, she is editing a volume for Lectura Boccaccii IX for Toronto University Press with Simone Marchesi, and is writing a book on Giovanni Boccaccio.
Christina Bruno has served as Associate Director of the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University since completing her PhD in History at Fordham in 2018. Her research focuses on fifteenth-century Italian Observant Franciscans as legal practitioners and administrators. She has also taught a course and study tour on the Camino de Santiago at Fordham during the last two Spring semesters.
Francesco Ciabattoni is Professor of Italian Literature at Georgetown University. Dr Ciabattoni’s research focus lies on Dante and the middle ages, the twentieth century short story and the interplay of music and literature. He has published articles on Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, a book music in the Comedy (Dante’s Journey to Polyphony, University of Toronto Press, 2010), a book on the lyrics of Italy’s songwriters (La citazione è sintomo d’amore, Carocci, 2016) and edited volumes on Primo Levi and Boccaccio. He has published essays and poems in many international journals as well as a collection of original poems (Paradosso terrestre, Il filo, 2008). Prof. Ciabattoni’s Digital Humanities projects include Italian Songwriters, a collaborative and open-access resource with bilingual critical commentaries on and analyses of Italian songwriters.
Hannah Jones is a librarian at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. She earned an M.S. in Library and Information Science and an M.A. in Late Medieval and Early Modern Religion and Society from Catholic University in 2019. In addition to volunteering with the Deiphira Project, she is also spearheading a project at the Dominican House to increase the exposure of its rare books collections.
Sindhu Krishnamurthy is a junior pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is passionate about striving for creative and ethical solutions to complex technical problems and is particularly interested in intersections of computer science and traditionally humanities disciplines.
Laura Morreale is a cultural historian of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian peninsula with an interest in medieval French-language writing. She is the co-creator of several digital projects, including the La Sfera and Image du Monde transcription challenges and Middle Ages for Educators, hosted by Princeton University. Her English-language translation of Martin da Canal’s Old French history of Venice, Les Estoires de Venise, appeared in 2009 (Padua: Unipress), and she co-edited The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean (Fordham University Press) in 2018.
Maire Richards is an independent scholar of medieval history. After completing her PhD at the University of California at Berkeley and a Junior Research Fellowship in History at Wolfson College, Oxford, she transitioned to a career in the public sector. She has now returned to the field of medieval studies, where she is currently researching the social and political contexts of religious communities in both the early and later Middle Ages. She is also a member of the French of Outremer Legal Texts Translation Project.
Paolo Scartoni is a PhD student in Italian Studies at Rutgers University. He holds a B.A from the University of Siena-Arezzo, a diploma in Piano from the Higher Institute of Musical Studies “R. Franci” in Siena, and a M.A. in Historical Piano from the Conservatory of Perugia. At Rutgers, his research focuses on the influence of medieval music theory on Dante’s linguistic reflection.
William Stoneman retired in December 2019 as Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. Bill is a member of the Advisory Council of the American Trust of the British Library, of the Advisory Board of the Schoenberg Database of Medieval Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania and of the International Advisory Council of Digital Scriptorium. He is Chair of the Special Collections Committee of the Boston Public Library and Chair of the Library Committee of the Grolier Club in New York.
