Luca Zipoli

Pronouns: he/him · lui/tu

A native of Rome (Italy), Luca Zipoli was trained at the distinguished Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he attended both the undergraduate and the graduate program. Prior to joining Bryn Mawr, he researched and taught as a Visiting Scholar at Princeton and at New York University, and had the opportunity to improve his Italian education through a full interaction with world-class international universities. In addition, he was appointed as Fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University for the Spring of 2025.

His main area of specialization is the literary culture of late medieval and early modern Italy, which he addresses in a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, privileging the intersections of fields such as history and visual arts, comparative literature and trans-medial studies, book history, and gender studies. The relationships between historical events, religious beliefs, and literary culture in Renaissance Florence are the main concern of his book-length project, titled Around The Magnificent: Poetry, Magic and Religion in Early Modern Florence, which he is currently developing from his Ph.D. dissertation.

His field of scholarly interest also includes the relationships between literature and the figurative arts, and in particular the trans-historical legacies of early modern chivalric epics into modern global arts and media (Alberto Savinio, Giorgio Manganelli, and Alfredo Giuliani among others). He has also researched and published on Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature, with a specific focus on Umberto Saba, Primo Levi, and more generally on how the theme of otherness (gender & sexuality, race & ethnicity, religion) emerges within the 20th-century Italian poetic tradition.

Luca Zipoli's single-authored articles appeared in numerous international peer-reviewed journals such as Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore, Nemla Italian Studies, Italian Culture, and Quaderni d’Italianistica. He serves in the steering committees and editorial boards of three international peer-reviewed journals in the field: "Italianistica", "Letteratura cavalleresca italiana", and "Rinascimento. Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento". 

Selected publications:

• (forthcoming) “Pulci, Luigi.” L’età nuova. Umanesimo e Rinascimento, organized by Michele Ciliberto, 4 voll., (Pisa-Firenze, Edizioni della Normale-Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 2025)
• “Writing After and About the Holocaust: Primo Levi and Umberto Saba” and “Appendix”, NeMLA Italian Studies, 44, 2024 (Special Issues “Primo Levi: Essays in Dialogue with Nicholas Patruno”): 117-151 and 215-224
• “Il cantastorie modernista. Luigi Pulci riletto da Alberto Savinio”, In principio era Pulci. Studi sulla fortuna di Luigi Pulci in Italia e in Europa, edited by Gabriele Bucchi, Enea Pezzini and Giacomo Stanga (Pisa, ETS, 2024): 231-235
• “L’enigma del saltimbanco: Giorgio Manganelli lettore di Luigi Pulci”, Italianistica, 51:3 (2022): 33-50
• “Translation as Transformation: Gender and Religion in Antonia Pulci’s Rappresentazione di Santa Domitilla (1483)”, in Women and Translation in the Italian Tradition. From the Renaissance to the Present, ed. by Helena Sanson (Paris, Garnier, 2022): 55-73
• “Amos Chiabov e la poesia «Morte di un pettirosso» di Umberto Saba”, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore. Classe di Lettere, 14:1 (2022): 407-435
• “«A lei scrivo volentieri». Lettere di Umberto Saba ad Amos Chiabov”, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 199.665 (2022): 27-78
• “«Strinsi col dolore un patto»: Saba e il racconto della malattia tra Canzoniere e lettere”, in Letteratura e Scienze, ed. by Alberto Casadei, Francesca Fedi, Annalisa Nacinovich, Andrea Torre (Rome, Adi editore, 2021): 1-14
• “«In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s’aperse»: il giardino di Armida nelle edizioni illustrate della Gerusalemme liberata dal Cinque al Settecento”, in Parola all’immagine. Esperienze dell’ecfrasi da Petrarca a Marino ed. by Andrea Torre (Lucca, Maria Pacini Fazzi, 2019): 103-121
• “Da «comedìa» a «tragedìa»: lingua e stile del secondo Morgante”, in Luigi Pulci, la Firenze laurenziana e il Morgante, ed. by Maria Cristina Cabani (Modena, Accademia Nazionale di Scienze Lettere e Arti, 2019): 113-138

Selected new courses designed and taught:

• Philadelphia the Global City: the Italian Legacy across Time (ITAL B2XX)
• Early-Modern Intersections: A New Italian Renaissance (ITAL B218)
• Modernity and Psychoanalysis: Crossing Boundaries in 20th-century Italy and Europe (ITAL B380)
• From Hell to Heaven: Dante’s Divine Comedy (ITAL B207)
• The Italian Margins: Places and Identities (ITAL B335)
• Italo Calvino Transnational Writer (ITAL B302)
• Diversity, Gender, and Queerness in Modern Italian Poetry (ITAL B324)
• Love, Magic, and Women Warriors: Renaissance Italian Epic (ITAL B209)

Selected field trips and visits organized:

• ‘New Italian Cinema,’ the 24th Edition of Philadelphia’s Italian Film Festival, within the class “Italian Through Culture I” (ITAL B101), 7 December 2024;
• Visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, within the class “Early-Modern Intersections: A New Italian Renaissance” (ITAL B218), 3 November 2024;
• Visit to the Rare Collections of Canaday Library, within the class “Early-Modern Intersections: A New Italian Renaissance” (ITAL B218), Bryn Mawr College, PA, 10 October 2024;
• ‘Madama Butterfly’ Opera Night at The Academy of Music, within the class “Italian Through Culture II” (ITAL B102), 26 April 2024;
• Visit to the Rare Collections of Canaday Library, within the class “From Hell to Heaven: Dante’s Divine Comedy” (ITAL B207), Bryn Mawr College, PA, 7 March 2024;
• Visit to the Rodin Museum, within the class “From Hell to Heaven: Dante’s Divine Comedy” (ITAL B207), 3 March 2024;
• Field trip to UPenn to attend Arielle Saiber’s Della Valle Lecture in Dante Studies, within the class “From Hell to Heaven: Dante’s Divine Comedy” (ITAL B207), 1 February 2024;
• ‘New Italian Cinema,’ the 23rd Edition of Philadelphia’s Italian Film Festival, within the class “Italian Through Culture I” (ITAL B101), 2 December 2023;
• ‘Anna Bolena’ Opera Night at The Haverford School’s Centennial Hall, within the class “Italian Through Culture I” (ITAL B101), 28 November 2023;
• Visit to the Eastern State Penitentiary, within the class “The Italian Margins: Places and Identities” (ITAL B335), 7 October 2023;
• ‘La Traviata’ Opera Night at The Haverford School’s Centennial Hall, within the class “Italian Through Culture I” (ITAL B101), 29 November 2022;
• Visit to the Rare Collections of Canaday Library, within the class “Love, Magic, and Women Warriors: Renaissance Italian Epic” (ITAL B209), Bryn Mawr College, PA, 27 October 2022.