Blake De Luca [he/they], 2022, is a PhD student in the Department of Italian Studies.

Initially focused on time as an abstract entity, as a philosophical concept and in its relation to spatiality throughout the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods in Italy (1300-1600), Blake’s research has shifted through their exposure to queer studies and critical theory.

Their new projected path through the program applies queer studies to Early Modern Italy, through the study of the representation of intersex and genderqueer figures in art and literature, notably the representations of “hermaphrodites”, relating them to their treatment in society, studied through legal and medical documents of the time. Finally, they aim to critically interpret the results of the research by looking at it through transgender studies, ideally culminating in the formulation of a renewed lens through which to queer both the early modern and conceptions of gender of the period.

Blake’s long-term objective is twofold: to create a space for queer Early Modern studies, and in doing so to unveil the continued existence of gender divergence throughout history (especially European history), which is a critical step in reclaiming the right to exist that the transgender community is getting increasingly denied.

Before joining the Department of Italian Studies at Berkeley, Blake received both their BA in Art History (summa cum laude) and their MA in Art History (summa cum laude) from Sapienza University in Rome, Italy. His undergraduate thesis proposed a theoretical framework for the relation between painted space and real space in fifteenth-century Italian altarpieces, while his Master’s thesis dealt with some of the iconographical derivations from the Mantegna Tarot, bringing him to study three painting cycles in Central Italy and to dive through XVI century archives.