She holds a Doctorate in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Florence, Italy, and a Masters and a Ph.D. in Italian from Cornell University. She teaches Italian literature, language, history, and culture. Her major areas of interest are Dante Studies, modern Italian culture, the Ventennio, the dialogue between literature and the arts. She published nationally and internationally on Dante, Cavalcanti, Pirandello, and Leopardi. Her current research branches in two main directions, Dante’s political philosophy in relation with the theory of government of Emperor Frederick II Hoenstaufen, and the political reception of Dante: in particular, the one of Giovanni Gentile, philosopher of Fascism. She is currently working on a multimedia Companion to Dante’s Divine Comedy.