Fall 2026 Office Hours: Thursdays 1-3pm
I am a specialist of early modern Italy (1500-1800), and I have a strong interest in Gramsci, Marxism, and historical method. My research spans different fields, spaces, and periods, reconfiguring Italy’s place in the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. Currently, I am working on 3 main areas:
- Refugees and forced displacement before nation states
- Indigeneity, Colonialism, and the Enlightenment
- Gramsci’s ideas about time, history, and multiple temporalities
I have written four monographs, and co-edited four volumes. One of my main areas of research is the history of refugees, exiles, and religious minorities. This has led me to publish The Refugee-Diplomat: Venice, England and the Reformation (Cornell University Press, 2018), awarded the 2019 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies, and more recently Renaissance Refugees. Negotiating Displacement in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2026) in which I study four displaced communities (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) and show that refugees were not only victims of state violence but actively contributed to the creation of asylum and resettlement policies.
I have also published on the intellectual history of colonialism in early America and on the ways in which European expansion shaped the Enlightenment. The Atlantic Republic of Letters. Knowledge and Colonialism in the Age of Franklin (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026), argues that early American scholars envisioned and coordinated the colonial project. While placing the ‘taxonomic impulse’ at the center of the Enlightenment, I show that various disciplines and intellectual practices - such as botany, antiquarianism, and bibliography - served as the instruments of European order, facilitating the classification and subjugation of North America’s nature and peoples. Materials from the book have appeared in “How Knowledge Travels: Learned Periodicals and the Atlantic Republic of Letters,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 2025/1, 75-107, and “Negotiating on the Frontier: Indian Treaties and the Republic of Letters,” in Reframing Treaties in the Medieval and Early Modern West (Oxford University Press, 2025), 423-442. A brief discussion of the book can be found on the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog and on UC Berkeley News.
I especially enjoy collaborative work. This has led me to carry out projects with colleagues in Europe and North America, and co-edit several volumes, which focus on Mediterranean studies, early modern Catholicism, and the history of peace-making, including: Braudel's La Méditerranée: Paradigms and Possibilities after 75 Years, co-edited with Rowan Dorin, Republics of Letters, 2026; Reframing Treaties in the Late Medieval and Early Modern West, co-edited with Isabella Lazzarini and Luciano Piffanelli (Oxford University Press, 2025); Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy. Space, Gender, Mobility, co-edited with John Christopoulos, Religions, 2023. I am currently co-editing two special issues: Carrefours des savoirs. L’Italie et la République des Lettres (XVIe-XXe siècles), with Vincenza Perdichizzi, (for Laboratoire italien), and Troubling Literature: Engaging with Victoria Kahn, with David Marno and Jane Tylus (for MLN).
I held visiting Professorships at Dartmouth College and UCLA, where I was the 2024/25 Speroni Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I was a fellow of Villa I Tatti (the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), and a Senior Fellow at the Townsend Center for the Humanities. I am grateful to have received fellowships and grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Hellman Foundation, the France-Berkeley Fund, the Social Science Matrix, the Houghton Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Newberry Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa.
I have directed dissertations and served on dissertation committees at Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, and Harvard (in the Departments of Italian, History, English, Art History, Music, Comparative Literature, French, Spanish and Portuguese). I welcome inquiries from all interested prospective students.
Selected publications:
For a complete bibliography of publications, click here. See also my personal website.
