Kristen Keach is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Italian Studies at UC Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. She holds a B.A. in Art History and Italian Studies from USC, magna cum laude, an M.A. in Art History from UC Davis where her thesis discussed the encoded homosexual dialogue between Robert Rauschenberg’s Inferno series and Jasper Johns’ Targets, and an M.A. in Italian Studies from UC Berkeley. Her research interests include ekphrasis, intertextuality, intervisuality, and intermediality. During the summer of 2019, Kristen participated as a Mellon Institute in Italian Paleography Fellow at the Newberry Library.

Kristen’s dissertation explores the intertextual and intervisual relationship between Dante’s Commedia, Boccaccio’s L’Amorosa visione, and Petrarch’s Trionfi to expose the shared triumphal dialogue present in artistic visualizations of the Trionfi.