Graduate

Graduate Program

Please Note: the deadline for Graduate Admissions has been extended to January 8, 2025. 

The Department of Italian Studies at UC Berkeley was designed to encourage innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, while grounding students in the fundamentals of Italian literary and cultural traditions from the thirteenth century to the Present.

We treat Italy as a matter of canonical works and questions, a center of gravity in multiple creative media and as a ‘place’ (physical, imaginary, political, economic, etc.) that must be situated multiply, as part of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the rest of the globe. 

Among our strengths are:

  • Global Dante and medieval studies 

  • Renaissance studies and the global early modern 

  • Italian colonialism, decolonial and postcolonial theory

  • critical race, diaspora, refugee studies, and migration studies

  • fascisms new and old

  • literary and cultural theory

  • film and media studies

  • material texts and the digital humanities 

  • gender studies and feminist thought (De Lauretis, Cavarero, Dominijanni, Braidotti)

  • “Italian Theory” (Gramsci, Agamben, Bifo, Forti, Esposito)

  • transnational and regional identity politics

  • multilingualism and translation studies

Our department is well-known for our interdisciplinary profile; the innovative, even ground-breaking, contributions of each of our faculty to Italian and other disciplines; and our professional and versatile PhDs. In order to encourage innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, the combined M.A./Ph.D. program requires students to designate one primary and one secondary field.  The primary field may be a 200 year period of Italian literature and culture, or a topic studied transhistorically. The secondary field should be chosen from among recognized disciplines.

In addition to tenure-track faculty positions at Vassar, Duke, the University of Texas, Austin, Rutgers University, the Ohio State University, and the University of Arizona, our graduates have gone on to pursue meaningful work in higher education administration, community college instruction, publishing, and developmental editing.

Program Snapshot

Download the Italian Studies Graduate Student Handbook

PDF icon 2023-2024-handbook-website.pdf

Download the Division-wide Graduate Student Guide

book cover

Download the Graduate Field Guide here.

PDF icon GraduateFieldGuide.pdf

The Italian Studies Department in particular is incredibly supportive, and I love the community we have here. It could be very different—I’m acutely aware of how things go in other competitive environments—but I have generally not found that to be true here. I feel like I’ve found my spot.
Lauren Bartone, PhD Student

Contact Advisors

Rhiannon Noel Welch

Associate Professor of Italian Studies; Giovanni and Ruth Elizabeth Cecchetti Chair of Italian Literature; Graduate Advisor
Italian Studies (Affiliate faculty in Film & Media, Critical Theory, the Center for Race and Gender, and Folklore)

Rhiannon Noel Welch works on modern Italian literature, film, and critical theory. Her first book, Vital Subjects: Race and Biopolitics in Italy, demonstrates how race and colonialism have long been central to Italian modernity and national culture, rather than a fascist...Read more about Rhiannon Noel Welch

Seth Arnopole

Graduate Student Services Advisor

issag@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail) (for campus business) italianadmit@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail) for graduate admission assistance and information

Graduate Program administration: Graduate admission...Read more about Seth Arnopole

Graduate Division Quick Links