Comparative Literature Program

After graduating summa cum laude from the University of Rome with a thesis on Luigi Pirandello, Laura Benedetti moved to the University of Alberta, where sub-freezing temperatures helped her concentrate on the theme of the garden in Renaissance chivalric poem, which happened to be the topic of her M.A. thesis. From then on, her interests in Renaissance and contemporary culture have fostered each other, leading to a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and to eight years as a junior faculty at Harvard University, where she became the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities. She joined the Georgetown University’s Italian Department in 2002, as the first Laura and Gaetano De Sole Associate Professor of Contemporary Italian Culture. She is the founder and director of the Georgetown University L’Aquila Summer Program, that combines intensive language studies with a variety of initiatives (such private lectures, film screenings, guided tours, cooking lessons and wine tastings) that enhance students’ understanding and appreciation of Italian culture (see http://oip.georgetown.edu/os/sites/summer/laquila.htm)

Professor Benedetti’s publications include a monograph on Torquato Tasso (La sconfitta di Diana. Un percorso per la «Gerusalemme liberata», 1997), the proceedings of two conferences (Gendered Contexts: New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies, 1996), as well as the edition of a Renaissance treatise (Giraldi Cinzio’s Discorso dei romanzi, 1999). Her most recent volume analyzes the evolving notion of motherhood in 20th-century Italy, as reflected in and shaped by literature. Published in 2007, "The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in 20th-Century Italy" won the 2008 Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies. The subjects of Laura Benedetti' articles span 700 years, from Boccaccio to the most recent narrative production, and deal with topics as diverse as the fictional treatment of historical figures (Reconstructing Artemisia: Twentieth-Century Images of a Woman Artist; L'amante di Orazio impazzì per Eleonora: avventure e sventure del personaggio Tasso attraverso i secoli), intertextuality in the Renaissance (Virtú femminile o virtú donnesca? Torquato Tasso, Lucrezia Marinella ed una polemica rinascimentale, Atlante, o i paradossi dell’amore, La «vis abdita» della «Liberata» e i suoi esiti nella «Conquistata», Giardini di piacere e di pericolo), and the representation of women (I silenzi di Alatiel, Vivere o essere vissuti: Amalia in Svevo’s «Senilità»), as well as issues of narrative strategies and construction (I riflessi di sé nelle storie degli altri: su alcuni sdoppiamenti sveviani). Since 2000, she has contributed the piece on Italian literature to the annual update of the Encyclopedia Britannica.