Gabriele Pedullà (1972) is professor of Italian Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of Roma Tre and – before Berkeley – has been visiting professor at Stanford, UCLA, Princeton, and the École Normale Supérieure (Lyon). He works principally on early modern political thought and nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, with special attention to the intersections between literature and politics. Almost thirty-five years after the first reading, however, his single favorite book remains Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.

Apart from his first book, La strada più lunga. Sulle tracce di Beppe Fenoglio (Donzelli, 2001), all his principal monographs have also appeared in English: In Broad Daylight: Movies and Spectators after the Cinema (Verso, 2012); Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism (Cambridge University Press, 2018); and On Niccolò Machiavelli: The Bonds of Politics (Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2023); his new commented edition of The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (Donzelli, 2022) is under translation for Verso.

With Sergio Luzzatto, he edited a three-volume Atlante della letteratura italiana (Einaudi, 2010-2012). He is also the general editor of the new commented edition of Cesare Pavese for the Garzanti. He loves the literary genre of the anthology, and has practiced it three times: Vv.Aa., Racconti della Resistenza (Einaudi, 2005); Vv.Aa., Parole al potere. Discorsi politici italiani: 1861-1994 (Bur, 2011); Vv.Aa., Racconti del Risorgimento (Garzanti, 2021). His reviews and literary essays appear in the literary supplement of “Il Sole 24 Ore” and “L’Espresso.”

Gabriele Pedullà is also the author of four books of fiction: the short-story collections Lo spagnolo senza sforzo (Einaudi, 2009, partially translated into English: Prize Mondello for a Debut Fiction; Prize Verga; Prize Frontino; Prize Cutro); Biscotti della fortuna (Einaudi, 2020: SuperPrize Flaiano); and Certe sere Pablo (Einaudi, forthcoming 2023); and the novel Lame (Einaudi, 2017: Prize Carlo Levi; Prize Martoglio – due to be published in English for Seagull Books as Blades).

His family name rhymes with hurrah, mullah, and Bogotá.

Professor Pedullà is our Spring 2023 Chair of Italian Culture and is teaching Italian Studies 215: Renaissance Literature and Culture.